Kites Without Strings
by NessieGG
Summary: Complete! Was there anything to gain from looking at Julia twice? Spike knew there wasn't. She was a streetsmart demon with the looks of an angel...and she was his best friend Vicious's. Set before Bebop. Spike's past. SpikeJulia
1. Never Seen A Bluer Sky

My first Cowboy Bebop fic. And happily, it's on time for Smarty Cat's birthday! I drove myself nuts with this, worrying the part wouldn't be done, or it wouldn't be long enough, but I'm pleased with how it turned out. Let me know how you liked it, Smarty! Happy birthday, hon! Although, I feel a little bad for giving you angst. . . And although this isn't a Birthday Fic, it does have a lot to do with a birthday.  
  
For those of you who enjoy these types of fics, please leave a review for me. I'd love some feedback.  
  
Warnings: Language, adult situations, a bit of violence, aaaaangst. This fic will be a two-shot.  
  
Notes: The title is taken from Annie's comment in Session 26: The Real Folk Blues part two. Chapter name is taken from the lyrics of Yoko Kanno's (the queen of jazz) "Blue." Story takes place before Bebop. I've given Julia a last name. My shot on Spike's, Julia's, and Vicious's relationship.  
  
-- Kites Without Strings -- Part One: Never Seen A Blue Sky  
  
By Gundam Girl  
  
The wine was bitter. Elegant, lovely glowing in the dim light of the low- hanging lamps, but bitter. And it certainly wasn't a beverage appropriate for the occasion.  
  
Of course, Spike thought wryly, propriety was not always something Vicious deemed necessary. It was just that the birthday parties he'd been given as a kid (courtesy of Mao and Annie) had never included alcohol, with the exception of his twenty-first. Annie hadn't known that he'd been drinking since he'd been sixteen, and Mao had taken it in stride. However, he and Vicious had gotten so slobbering drunk that night that, although Annie and Mao didn't throw the parties anymore, they certainly didn't bring him any booze.  
  
He'd met Vicious that year, he recalled. He'd been twenty? Damn, he was certain he'd been eighteen at the latest. He felt as though he'd known Vicious his whole life rather than only four years.  
  
While he thought about Vicious, he took another gulp of the scarlet liquid from his glass and looked about room at the said man's own party-throwing attempt. It wasn't the most cheerful event; there were no balloons, or sentiment-bearing banners, and there was no stack of wrapped presents in sight. It was much more subtle than that, more elegant. Vicious always did have class. But the pristine clothes that covered the tables and the china and the expensive, catered food made the party seem more like a Red Dragon business meeting rather than Vicious's girlfriend's birthday celebration.  
  
With a sigh, he tossed back the rest of the wine and raised a hand to brush unruly green hair away from his eyes. And just where the hell was the woman - and, admittedly, the man of the hour anyway?  
  
He hadn't met this "Julia," but the way Vicious spoke of her, he could believe that she was a babe. Vicious would never settle for less. And anyone less wouldn't dare try to get Vicious.  
  
"Spike." At the voice, Spike Spiegel turned and grinned at the shorter man, who was, like him, clad in the black uniform of the Red Dragon syndicate.  
  
"Lin," he said to his fellow gangster. "Wasn't sure if you'd be here tonight. What's the deal with guest of honor not getting honored right about now?"  
  
"She got hung up," he said with a shrug. "I think Shin is still going through her back round check. She just joined us today."  
  
"Really? So, enlightened on her birthday, eh?" Spike laughed. "Where'd Vicious meet her?"  
  
"No idea," Lin told him with a smile. "Never seen her."  
  
"Hm. Well. . ."  
  
"But she won't be here for another hour at least. It's off-schedule, but Vicious isn't upset for once. He wants you to join him for pool in the next room."  
  
Spike grinned. "Sounds fun. Shall we?"  
  
"We shall," answered Lin and the two friends stepped out of the massive banquet room into the expansive restaurant's bar; four billiard tables, a long bar, tall stools, and small four-person tables covered the cigarette- smoky room. At the billiard square closest, a light-haired man with tall stature and a tight face set the billiards into a perfect triangle. He lifted his eyes.  
  
"Spike," he said, his voice soft. "I'm glad you could make it."  
  
"Glad I could come," Spike replied with a lopsided grin. "You'd do the same for me."  
  
Vicious smiled fully now; Spike Spiegel was one of the two people he would do so for. "Indeed I would," he nodded. "Take a cue."  
  
Because Vicious had, Spike shrugged out of his black trench coat and wore khakis and a sweater. "Are you ready to get the hell beat out of you, Vicious?"  
  
"I return that statement to you, my friend."  
  
The two men held a mutual, unspoken enjoyment for billiards. It helped the time pass, and it let the two be competitive where the syndicate did not. Spike's striped balls were making it into the pockets faster than Vicious's solid ones were, and the green-haired man cherished every moment of his victory over the Red Dragon's snake.  
  
After winning for the fourth time (and earning a deep scowl), Spike cricked his neck. The time was going by fast. It was already thirty minutes past an hour since they'd started playing.  
  
"Julia! Happy birthday. I'm Rose Mayes, from the ammunition department, remember?"  
  
Spike glanced up. Vicious scowl had faded, and a soft smile held its place. The other person he smiled for had entered. Changing directions, his brown eyes landed on a tall, sculpted, female body covered from neck to toe in clinging, black leather. A river of wavy gold flowed down her back, which faced him.  
  
"I remember." Her voice.it was like scarlet rose petals drifting to cold cement. "Thank you, Rose." The woman turned and Spike caught the face. Lips shimmered like rubies in the dim light of the bar. Through the smoke, he saw the sunglasses perched on her head. And below the sunglasses was a pair of the bluest eyes Spike had ever seen. They made him think of the water the gold of her hair must have replaced, sparkling and tantalizing; or of the skies the Earth used to have so many years ago. He'd only seen pictures, never the real thing.  
  
"That is Julia," Vicious told him softly at his side. "Remember, Spike. Don't trust that woman."  
  
Spike looked at him from the corners of his eyes and wanted to ask what the hell that meant, but Vicious had set down his pool cue and began to walk forward.  
  
"Julia. Happy birthday."  
  
Julia turned at the voice that scratched like ice on glass. "Vicious. It means a lot that you'd have this party for me."  
  
"It means as much that you decided to join us today." He took her hand and kissed the row of knuckles. Watching him, Spike decided her skin must be soft, maybe softer than her hair looked.  
  
Spike finished tying his trench coat back on with the customary gold braid of the Red Dragon uniform. "Well, Vicious, don't you think it's time to get in there?"  
  
"He's right." The other man led Julia into the dining room by the waist, and they both donned their own coats. "Come in and I'll introduce you."  
  
Julia had a certain eagerness about her as she watched the syndicate members talk quietly and sip wine. Her eyes glowed with the newly realized sense of responsibility that came with being in the Red Dragon tong.  
  
"Julia." Upon the speaking of her name, she turned to Vicious with a smile. "As I said, I'd like you to meet Spike Spiegel, the best pilot ever since he was sixteen."  
  
Julia's smile turned on him and had him craving, warmed all over, and all he could do was shake her hand. Was he the only one that felt the electric jolt from her marble-cool touch? Forcing back the ache in his stomach, Spike grinned.  
  
"Well, I don't know about that," he said in reply to Vicious's comment. "Seventeen maybe.surely not sixteen."  
  
Any woman would laugh. All of them had before at any show of Spike's comical charm. Julia didn't laugh. Her smile grew, yes, but it wasn't enough. Not for him. She gave every impression of being a longtime Red Dragon agent, but the agents laughed, and she had only joined today.  
  
Julia was more. He was sure of it. And painfully, he felt that he wanted to know kind of more she had. More than this life? His life?  
  
But she was Vicious's, he suddenly remember. And never before had he wanted to take something Vicious had. But now. . .  
  
"It's good to meet you, Spike."  
  
Why did his name have to sound so good on her tongue?  
  
This was Julia's question as much as Spike's. The fluffy green mass that was supposedly his natural hair didn't take away from the lanky-figured man's attractiveness. Although she was sure that anyone else would look utterly ridiculous, this Spike Spiegel - was that his real name? - was one of the more handsome men on Mars.  
  
Of course, where Spike burned, Vicious contrasted in a frigidity cold enough to sear, and those frosted eyes singed her now. Julia quickly looked away from the warmer man.  
  
There was no reason to compare the two.  
  
"Are you hungry?" Vicious's voice startled her, but there was, thankfully, no visible reaction.  
  
"I'm starving," she told him with a more forced smile. "I've been with that Shin all day."  
  
"Let's get you fed, then. Spike," Vicious asked, "will you join us?"  
  
"With pleasure," he said, voice full of his trademark cockiness and followed them to the buffet.  
  
Dinner commenced with little concern for himself. Spike realized that there was no sense falling for a girl already taken. He morals had always been better than that.  
  
After he had eaten and had drank enough to put himself in a comfortable haze, he stood and announced his decision to head in for the night.  
  
"So early?" asked Vicious. "We haven't cut the cake yet. It's chocolate," he added with a smirk.  
  
Spike patted his flat stomach. "Had enough, thanks," he assured him. "Gotta keep my manly figure. Oh, but before I go. . . Almost forgot, I'm such an ass. . ." He reached into one of the many hidden pockets inside his coat and pulled out a long-stemmed, thorn-less rose. With a wink and much ceremony, he handed the pretty red flower to Julia, thinking it was the same color of her mouth.  
  
Had he not been so tipsy, he may have noticed the extra glow to her eyes.  
  
"Sorry it's not anything more extrovagey. . .extrevena. . .special," he told her, having given up on any four-syllable words. "If I'd've met you earlier, it'd be better."  
  
Julia shook her head and offered him the same tight-lipped smile. Spike felt a little disappointed. He'd been hoping to see teeth, in the very least. "It's perfect, Mr. Spiegel."  
  
"Spike," he blurted. The formality ruffled more feathers than he cared to admit. "Just Spike, thanks."  
  
She nodded once and looked down at the rose. "Then Spike. . ." Again, the name tingled inside her mouth. Julia buried the feeling deep in her chest. "Thank you." She frowned. This wasn't right. She couldn't think beyond Vicious.  
  
"You're welcome." Spike shoved his hands into his pockets. Judging by her sudden facial change, he had done something to displease her. Damn it. The guilty emotion running through his heart was sobering him too quickly for his liking.  
  
"Good night, Spike," Vicious nodded.  
  
He nodded back. "'Night. Happy birthday, Julia."  
  
"Good night, Spike," she echoed her boyfriend.  
  
Spike turned on his heel and made a beeline for the door.  
  
Julia watched him go. Once the door had closed behind the last glimpse of his black trench coat, she reverted her gaze to the flower. For all she knew, it could not be naturally red at all. It was possible that the rose was white, covered in blood, and therefore appearing scarlet. Nothing about her or anyone around her was true anymore. She herself could not be truthful, and her whole being might as well have been one big lie.  
  
"Let's get out of here," Vicious voice suggested softly. She shuddered, not because his tone was seductive, but because of the chill that met her ear. Suddenly tired, she could only nod, and she let him take her hand and lead her out of the restaurant, leaving a brief order with Lin to box the remaining cake and send it to her apartment.  
  
Apparently, Vicious's appetite sought something more than dessert tonight. She had a feeling that his birthday gift would not be as enjoyable as she had forced herself to believe it would.  
  
***  
  
Spike *was* an ass. In the course of four hours, he had probably thought every sinful thought and imagined every sinful image known to man. And for his best friend's woman, he noted with disgust.  
  
He sat up in bed, clothed in nothing but a pair of dark blue silk boxers - he was no stranger to extravagance, having been raised by Mao Yenrai, and bed clothes hardly mattered - and turned on his bedside lamp. He plowed his hands through his own thick hair, and groaned, falling back against the pillows again.  
  
He couldn't sleep. Simply could not. Period. Tossing back the blanket, he fished around in the drawer of his nightstand until he found a half- empty pack of cigarettes and a small lighter. Flicking the wheel twice, he lit the roll and eagerly took a drag. It only succeeded in slightly calming his racing heart.  
  
Standing, Spike tugged on the pair of khakis he'd left to wrinkle in the middle of the floor not even two hours earlier and stepped out onto the balcony of his elaborate apartment.  
  
Red. The color represented so much. Mars, the gritty planet on which he'd been born and raised, the syndicate, blood he'd spilled himself with Vicious at his side. . . Right now, the only thing red meant to him was the unsatisfactory birthday gift he'd given Julia Mandir. Roses. Did any guy really do that anymore? It had been a while since he'd actually worried about it. He'd been with women, and until now, he'd thought himself easily capable of impressing one. But currently, he was tortured over not impressing one he had to right to try and impress.  
  
"Shit," he muttered. This was ridiculous. Revolting, even. His mind was full of thought about an unavailable woman. Any man would have surrendered already; pride would have assured that. But Annie had called him the most stubborn hooligan on Mars for a reason, and he was living up to that title.  
  
Julia. . . Her name itself was like a drug, addictive and expensive. There would be a large price to pay if he got tangled into too tight of a knot. If Vicious felt betrayed, best friend or not, he could lunge from the shadows at any given moment, and he would throttle until dead.  
  
Spike dropped the cigarette off the balcony, caring little where it landed. Best take a pill or something and drug himself to sleep. Anything was better than letting himself be shot over and over with thoughts of that angelic demon that wore leather.  
  
But, Spike admitted after choking down a few tablets with some water, he would have dreams that demon. . .and probably the other that she was with.  
  
***  
  
Julia stared at the ceiling, which was a light yellow color. Then she decided she couldn't look at that, because if she threw up now, she guessed light yellow was the color that would come from her stomach.  
  
Sex with Vicious had never been tender. Passionate, yes. Fulfilling? For the moment. After only two weeks, however, she had drifted away from liking his soft silvery hair between her fingers, from liking his straight white teeth raking across her skin. She'd drifted away from liking. . .anything. Anything at all about it.  
  
Why?  
  
The question hadn't occurred before. She'd been dating Vicious for almost a month and a half now, had been sleeping week him for over a week. And compared to all the other men, Vicious was the best bedmate she'd had. Why had she lost interest in only fifteen days.  
  
Maybe because it was her birthday. She's just turned twenty-four after all, and she hadn't done too much celebrating. True, she'd never done much celebrating, but in the least, she'd gone to some bar for amiable birthday chat with the other women who liked to drink brandy on weeknights.  
  
Julia pulled the covers up to her neck and turned on her side so that her back faced Vicious. A long, pale arm came about her waist, but fortunately, it only held her to him, and didn't not suggest anything else. For now.  
  
Julia's eyes drooped until only a glimmer of Callisto-sky-colored eyes could be seen. The room was blurring with the sleep in her head. As she drifted off, she wondered if Spike Spiegel's hair was softer than Vicious's, and could only imagine that it was.  
  
**********************************************************************  
  
Gundam Girl: Yay! Part one's done! This was for Smarty Cat's birthday, and I hope you liked it, hon. I admit, I fretted about this all week and could only wish it to be enough. So, a birthday-related fic for the birthday girl. Happy birthday, Smarty Cat!  
  
Note: I was listening to Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl" as I wrote this. It really fits. . . weird.  
  
For anyone else who reads this, please leave a review. This *is* my first Cowboy Bebop fic, and I'd like to know how I'm doing. This won't be incredibly long, but I've always liked to think about Spike's past, so it screamed to be written. Review please, and thanks!  
  
-GG 


	2. Days Are Just Like Moments Turned To Hou...

Thanks to any and all who reviewed the first installment of this fic. I really love Spike/Julia, and I'm glad you all do too! Please enjoy part two.  
  
Warnings: For this chapter, language, sexual innuendo, and upcoming violence. And I was wrong. . .this will have MORE than two parts. So much for trying to keep it short. There's just so much to be written for Spike and Julia, isn't there?  
  
Note: Chapter title is from "Rain" by Yoko Kanno.  
  
Dedication: To the ML girls and the LJ buddies who showed interest in this fic. In fact, this is for all you Spike/Julia fans! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  
  
Disclaimer: Don't own Spike, Julia, Vicious, Lin, Annie or any other charas from the show I might use.  
  
-- Kites Without Strings -- Part Two: Days Are Just Like Moments Turned To Hours  
  
By Gundam Girl  
  
It rained in Tharsis City the next morning. Spike could only think the artificial weather program was cooperating with his current mood; dreary, gray, and sullen. Hell, with a nearby factory pouring smog out from various pipes, Mars must've needed a smoke as much as he did.  
  
There was always something he didn't like about waking up to a rainy morning. Maybe it was that everyone seemed pissed off, or that the women covered more skin to resist the cold. For whatever reason, he felt lethargic and disagreeable.  
  
He hoped no one would come by and ask to borrow a spatula or something along those lines. He didn't really wanna go off on them.  
  
As he pulled on khakis and a green sweater to wear beneath his syndicate trench coat, he wondered absently at why everybody on Mars carried black umbrellas. It was like attending a funeral, the kind where everyone wore black to show grievance but didn't really give a damn about the person keeled over. It was just another attribute of the uncaring, unfeeling Red Planet.  
  
"Spike, it's late," Anastasia called when he first walked into her shop. "Past eleven."  
  
"All the more reason for you to sell me a beer," Spike replied with a grin, pulling one from a freezer on the back wall. "Annie, my beauty, how are you this morning?"  
  
"Besides the usual punks comin' in here trying to steal donuts and my magazines?" Annie queried with a raised eyebrow. "I'm fine. You look like hell, Spike. Why?"  
  
"It's a Monday, Annie."  
  
"It's a Wednesday, my boy, and you look totally wrecked. Hung over?" She held the bottle of beer instead of running it over a scanner. "'Cause you might wanna get some aspirin instead of this."  
  
Spike shrugged and tossed a packet of cheap cigarettes onto the counter as well. "I drank last night, but I'm not hung over. That doesn't stop me from feeling like shit."  
  
"A flu," Annie suggested, ringing up the items. "Take some orange juice, on my tab. Mao would hate it - and me - if you came down with somethin'."  
  
Spike grinned and leaned over the counter to kiss her cheek. "You're an angel, Annie, and I love you. But I'm not sick. And I don't need your orange juice."  
  
"How was Vicious's girl's birthday party?" she asked. "Good cake? He never asks me to bake for him anymore."  
  
"Didn't try it. I won't eat any desserts that you don't make, Annie. And I'll look into Spike's bakery choice. I'll try to change his mind." Spike lifted a hand, poking a cigarette into his mouth and searching his coat for a lighter. "If you need help with the kids coming in, give me a call. I'm good with little shoplifters."  
  
"Take it easy, Spike, or I'll never sell you another cigarette as long as I live!"  
  
"And may you live long and prosperously!" Spike exclaimed as he walked out, the bell on the door dinging in his wake.  
  
Annie sighed. She'd raised the boy herself, with Mao. And exactly like his father, Nate Spiegel, Spike was a stick of dynamite waiting to explode. The boy could never stay in the same place for long.  
  
She turned to the rosary hanging on the cash register and said a quick prayer for Spike. She had barely uttered an Amen when she turned to a group of teenage boys no more than fourteen and started to shout.  
  
"Hey, you kids! Get outta here now, or I'll turn you over and hang you from my roof by your toenails!"  
  
***  
  
It would be a long day at work. Or the place he liked to call work. He wasn't the only guy there that sat around, trying to look busy, and wishing they were somewhere else. He'd rather be out flying the Swordfish any day. Or kissing a woman. Or doing more than just kissing.  
  
Spike smirked as Lin walked back, catching his eye and pulling at the tie beneath his trench coat, impressively mimicking a hanging. Lin grinned back and continued walking toward a large office that everyone knew Vicious was in.  
  
It was when Lin shut the office door that Spike noticed the briefcase he held. Lin and the other people around here usually did not carry briefcases. There were so many hidden pockets in the uniform trench coats that no one required one.  
  
Interested, Spike considered tapping into the conversation behind the door; he did carry a stethoscope that would easily allow him access to what was said. And the secretary stationed nearby was a woman that could be easily charmed, by either money or a date.  
  
Money, he decided, scanning her rather meaty figure, would be a less painful sacrifice. He reserved nights on the town for women a little - er - less large. "Winnie!" he called out, rising from the chair and pulling a slightly wrinkled fifty-woolong note from his pocket.  
  
"Mr. Speigel," Winnifred Anderson, alert eyes snapping to his.  
  
"Ah, there begins the loyal employee," Spike started; flattery would be beneficial as well. "They really should pay you more, Winnie. Such an upright business manner is hard to come across these days. Who heads the Red Dragon finances anyway? Oh, nevermind," he said carelessly, letting a shrug shift his shoulders.  
  
Winnie blushed. Spike was eight years her junior, but that still entitled her to a certain appreciativeness for the attractive younger man. "Was there something you needed, Mr. Spiegel?"  
  
"Spike, please, Winnie. And yes, actually." With much ceremony, Spike held up the note and waved it lightly about. "I need you to avert your eyes from Vicious's office for just a moment. Can you be a dear and do that for me?"  
  
Winnie's eyes left Spike and moved to the note; woolongs were always more alluring than any man, even Spike Speigel. Her gaze darted about the room, as though searching for possible witnesses who would rat her out; yet Spike knew for a fact that there was no one on the entire floor but himself, Winnie, Vicious, and Lin.  
  
Her fingers moved quickly and snatched up the tiny slip of paper.  
  
"I'm sure there's something else that requires my attention," she informed him with a shrug.  
  
Spike didn't resist one of the grins he was famous for, the one that always seemed to say 'I win.' "You are a busy woman."  
  
"And you are a nosy man. Go on and leave me alone, Mr. Spiegel." Before he changed his mind, Winnie thought greedily.  
  
"'Afternoon, Ms. Anderson." Spike smiled and sidled over to Vicious's securely shut door. His hand had just dipped into his trench coat for his stethoscope, when the door opened wide and Vicious and Lin stepped out.  
  
Vicious hard black eyes saw the gleam of metal just barely uncovered between Spike's fingers. "Spike," he warned, more exasperated than irritated. A small sparkle of amusement hung in his eye.  
  
Spike, realizing he was in no real danger, laughed lightly and replaced the stethoscope. "A few seconds too late," he muttered. "Caught me."  
  
Vicious shook his head. "What'd you hear?"  
  
"Nothing, unfortunately." Spike kicked at the impeccable white tile beneath him.  
  
Lin shrugged. "Better for you."  
  
Spike raised an eyebrow. "Is it?"  
  
Before either of Spike's fellow Dragons could reply, Julia, sinfully immaculate in black leggings and a black leather jacket, came out of the office. "I'll be running off-" she began, but stopped when she saw Spike. "Oh."  
  
Spike smirked at her. "Hey."  
  
Julia blinked at him for a moment, then turned to Vicious. Spike pretending that nothing in his chest had twisted.  
  
"I'll be heading out," she continued to Vicious, who turned his head to give her a single nod. "I'll be home after five, just in case you-"  
  
"I'll stop by," Vicious assured her. "I'll bring dinner."  
  
Julia gave him a small, barely-perceptible smile. "I'll see you then." She started to walk away.  
  
"Hang on," Vicious called to her, and instantly Julia halted in mid-stride. "Spike will go with you."  
  
"I will?" Spike asked.  
  
"He will?" Julia echoed.  
  
Vicious let loose a little grin himself. "It's a dim Mars day. You'll need an escort. Spike, you haven't talked to Mao today, have you?"  
  
Spike tilted his head a bit, pondering the situation he seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into. His stomach felt like a block of ice. "No, but I-"  
  
"Nevermind then. I'll take care of it for you." Vicious set a hand on his long-time friend's shoulder. "We'll exchange favors today. I watch your back, and you watch Julia's."  
  
"I watch your back," Spike countered. "Not anyone else's." He didn't see Julia's insulted expression behind him.  
  
"Looking out for her is the same as looking out for me," Vicious assured her.  
  
"Really, Vicious. I grew up on Ganymede behind a casino," Julia began. "There's no need-"  
  
"Ganymede and Mars are different," Vicious cut in. "Very different. Now enough arguing. I think a little shopping will be good for you, Spike."  
  
"Thanks," Spike muttered.  
  
"Send any bills to me," Vicious told them. "No charge at all, got it?"  
  
Julia sighed slightly, nodded, and headed for the elevator.  
  
Spike, on the other hand, stepped in closer to Vicious's ear. "What happens if I wanna get her drunk?" he joked in an undertone. "Will you pay for the wine, too?"  
  
"Get outta here." Vicious gave him a small shove. "If that happens, the only thing I'll pay for is the bullet that I'll send through your head!"  
  
Spike laughed out loud as he joined Julia in the elevator.  
  
***  
  
Actually, the "shopping" Julia did was not in the clothes arenas most women looked at items in. Spike and the woman spent most of the afternoon in back-alley stores with shady lighting and even shadier dealers.  
  
"Why the hell would he send you to a place like that?" Spike asked once they came outside and Julia possessed a gun with the power to destroy half a skyscraper.  
  
"Vicious didn't send me here; he merely recommended it," Julia told him, reaching into a long compartment in her coat. "I needed a weapon."  
  
"Semi-mass destruction?"  
  
"Whatever works," she nodded. She put up a small umbrella.  
  
Red, Spike noticed with a smirk. Hadn't he just thought this morning that everyone on Mars carried black? Well. That just made Julia a little different then, didn't it?  
  
"So you're from Ganymede," he commented once they had sat down at a small coffee shop on the way to Julia's apartment. "Behind a casino."  
  
At his words, Julia's eyes narrowed to slits. The expression wasn't quite a glare, but not quite a wince either. "I'll have to be more careful. I didn't intend to give away so much information about myself."  
  
"You are among friends," Spike assured her, leaning back in the booth that sat in, long arms spread on the top of the rubber seat. "What was it like growing up there? I've been there, but-"  
  
"If you've been there," Julia interrupted, "then you should be able to guess." There was a slight chill to her voice.  
  
"I was there on business," Spike replied smoothly, taking out a cigarette and lighting up. "And I went in the casinos, not behind them."  
  
Julia's chin rose, almost defensively. "You have no right to pry into the subject."  
  
"I don't pry, I caress." Spike winked pointedly at her. "I like to caress."  
  
Julia looked away from them to half-smile at the waiter who brought her café au lait and Spike shot of bourbon. She spoke briefly to him about sending the bill to Vicious's tab, and then she turned back to the Spiegel.  
  
"You and Vicious are good friends?" she asked bluntly.  
  
Spike shrugged, shooting his bourbon. "I like to think we are most of the time."  
  
"And the rest of the time?"  
  
He shot her his lopsided grin. "It's never pretty the rest of the time. But when we're not trying to kill each other, and we're. . ." He lowered his voice. "When we're killing who we're supposed to kill, we help each other."  
  
"You can't always consider an accomplice in murder a friend," Julia pointed out, the lowness in her tone giving it a husky purr. She leaned over the table toward him.  
  
Spike leaned in too. "He helped me hide the first guy I made into a corpse, Julia. If that's not a friend, I don't really know what is."  
  
Julia smiled. "Maybe you're right."  
  
Their noses were almost touching. Spike's eyes, amber from the artificial sunset, glowed with a touch of desire. "Maybe I am," he whispered. He nearly, too nearly, moved in.  
  
Julia abruptly drew back. Draining her beverage, she stood up. "We should go. It's nearly four."  
  
Spike nodded, holding in a sigh, and stood as well. "Yep. Gotta have you home when Vicious comes by with dinner."  
  
Julia's smile, which had wavered, now most certainly disappeared.  
  
"Dinner," she murmured. "Right."  
  
Spike followed her from the coffee shop, an eyebrow raised in question. Julia's smile returned, but this time it looked forced.  
  
She looked forced.  
  
***  
  
The apartment Julia lived in was mediocre for Mars. It wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst. And Spike had known both.  
  
It was brick, with a partly-crumbled stoop leading to the inside stairway. It was only a couple blocks away from the red-light district, and he had no doubt that there were awful moments when insecurity threatened to engulf her. He could see it in her eyes. This location was not the best when dealing with the endless stress the Red Dragon could put on a person.  
  
The sun was going down as she climbed the stoop. Spike followed. She paused to turn and give him a raised eyebrow. He shrugged.  
  
"I should stay until I see you safely in," he told her, a smile that said "I'm trying to be helpful" on his face. "Vicious would kill me if I walked away and someone shot you on your way in."  
  
"Vicious might be upstairs," Julia told him, as though they could get caught doing something they weren't.  
  
Spike grinned. "Is that supposed to complicate matters? Surely, my walking you home can't be too strenuous for our mental selves." He offered her an arm and a wink. "I'm a syndicate gentleman. I won't try anything."  
  
Julia shook her head. "You don't get it, do you?"  
  
Spike blinked; didn't get what, exactly? "The only thing I don't get is how walking up a set of stairs is going to set us up for a possibly dangerous situation."  
  
Julia gave him a baleful expression. "Two sets of stairs."  
  
"My mistake," he replied with a secret smile. "Next time, I'll remember you live on the third floor. Just in case I need to get in there. To save you from a fire or something."  
  
Julia looked like she just might smile again, but she only rolled her eyes and more or less took his arm - if grabbing his elbow and tugging him inside counted. "You're definitely trouble, Spike Speigel."  
  
Because the stairwell was dimly lit, Spike didn't bother to hide a more serious smile, one that was nearly wistful. "I'm sure I could say the same about you."  
  
"I'm sure you could," she answered without looking at him. And so she missed his frown.  
  
"Damn shame you live here," Spike said conversationally once they reached her door - 302, he thought with a quick dart of his eyes, and stored the number away. "I know the Dragons can hook you up with one of the suites for the privileged members. And as Vicious's close friend, you're certainly privileged." He wasn't smiling at all now, and his garnet eyes were dark.  
  
Julia didn't smile either as she unlocked the door and stepped inside, flipping on the lights as she slipped out of her black leather jacket, revealing the black tank top she wore underneath it and her long, well- toned arms.  
  
There was a white bandage wrapped around the space just below her right shoulder.  
  
"What happened?" Spike asked quickly, leaning on the doorframe. He didn't imagine she'd been in any early-member scuffle for the syndicate - he'd have heard about it off the bat. Hell, he probably would've been there.  
  
Julia met his eyes, then glanced at the bandage and hurriedly pressed her hand to the wrap. "Oh - nothing. A small injury."  
  
"Cut?"  
  
"Yeah. A little bruised. Things got, um. . ." She turned her back to him and made a show of arranging the flowers in a vase by the window. "A little aggressive. But it will heal quickly."  
  
"I see," Spike murmured. He checked his watch. Five-ten on the dot; and there was a sound of boots hitting the steel stairs.  
  
Vicious appeared in his black-encased glory moments later. A thin smile, as though it was painted on, spread his lips. True to his earlier promise, he carried bags filled with some kind of take-out. "Spike," he nodded to his friend, and Spike nodded back. "I thank you for going with Julia. Remind me to buy you a drink sometime."  
  
"I hear that," Spike replied with a grin. He turned his head, and his eyes met Julia's again. "With a pay like that, I could take her out anytime."  
  
Julia didn't smile at him. But she wanted to, she realized with some surprise. She really wanted to smile. At him. For him.  
  
Vicious looked pleased, if one knew him well enough to be able to tell. "Excellent," he muttered, clapping his partner's shoulders. "I'll remember that. There's an upcoming event that I'll probably need your help with."  
  
"Oh?" Spike asked without voicing the question while Julia's head twisted over to look at her boyfriend.  
  
"We'll see," was Vicious's only answer. "Well," he said, less cryptically, "we're going to eat. Care to join us, Spike?"  
  
"No thanks," Spike replied, instantly turning down the invitation and pushing his hands into his pocket. He suddenly wanted another cigarette. "I might grab a bite with Annie. Mao left for Jupiter today, so she'll be alone for dinner tonight, so. . ."  
  
Vicious nodded. "You're good to her, Spike."  
  
"She's been good to me." Spike caught Julia's eye, and she seemed relieved about something. Probably because he was leaving. He *really* wanted a cigarette. "Well. G'night all."  
  
"'Night, Spike," Julia called softly and watched him walk out. When he was gone, Vicious shut the door - and locked it.  
  
"What do you say to some pre-dinner entertainment?" he suggested with cold eyes.  
  
***  
  
Spike kicked a small clump of red dirt on his way home. Mao had gone to Jupiter today, but Annie had made plans to eat dinner with Shin and Lin at a restaurant their uncle owned. There was really nothing more he wanted to do than crawl into bed with a beer and a remote control. There had to be some action movie with a lot of blood on tonight.  
  
Because he suddenly wanted to take part in a sting - a night sting.  
  
If it was night, there would be no sun to shine on Julia's hair and make it seem like molten gold.  
  
*********************************************************************  
  
GG: Whoo-hoo! Sexual tension! Merry Christmas. Please review! 


	3. Games People Play

The reviews I got for part two were some of the best I've ever had; they were intelligent and constructive and I can't thank you guys enough! Keep reading, please, even if this story takes me years to finish!  
  
Warning: Violent situations, sexual innuendo, a bit of soft lime.  
  
Note: Chapter title is from "Words That We Couldn't Say" by Yoko Kanno.  
  
-- Kites Without Strings -- Part Three: Games People Play  
  
The next time Spike ran into Julia – and Vicious, for that matter – was three days later. The syndicate had stayed quiet for the last little while, but apparently things were ready to liven up again.  
  
There was a bust planned for the evening at dusk. As usual with the Red Dragons, the brutality of the operation would be softened by the intently romantic setting; the sunset casting a scarlet glow over all of Mars – prime Red Dragon time.  
  
Vicious always envisioned it as standing in the shadow of a huge pile of roses; Spike saw it as a river of blood rushing through the streets.  
  
He met his syndicate partner in the lobby of Mao Yenrai's office building. Mao enjoyed busts, Spike recalled. The man considered it an art, scheduling and timing and predicting and anticipating. How quickly would the cops come, how quickly should they get out tonight?  
  
Which lives would be inevitably lost? Because lives were lost every time. Every damn time.  
  
"Spike," Vicious greeted him with a smile. Vicious always smiled before the Dragons prepared to strike. It was as much of his nature to kill as it was to eat. "I'm glad you decided to give up hibernation."  
  
"That's a bit of a harsh statement," Spike shot back, "especially since you haven't been directly social yourself these days."  
  
Vicious shrugged one shoulder and shifted his head to turn his spread of lips in Julia's direction. "I've been...distracted, you could say."  
  
"I guess I could," Spike murmured. He watched Julia with calm eyes; she nodded acknowledgement of him. "Do we intend to take a newbie up on this one?"  
  
"Yes," Julia said quickly.  
  
"Not this time," corrected Vicious, completely ignoring his girlfriend, and Spike could tell there had been an argument over this particular subject. "It's a little high-level for beginners, don't you think, Spike?"  
  
He replied in kind because Vicious was his friend and because Spike enjoyed stirring people up. "I think so."  
  
"Men are impossible," Julia murmured, quietly fuming.  
  
"Yet she enjoys challenges," noted Vicious. He sent Julia a significant eye flash. She settled, but not much. "Joining us was a challenge in itself."  
  
"And now I'm questioning its worth," she said fiercely, "if I'm given little side-quests instead of the direct game."  
  
"That," Spike interrupted softly, "is what gets people killed. This isn't a game." Drawing a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, Spike lit up and stuck the roll in his mouth. "It's a darker piece of life."  
  
Vicious checked his watch. "We won't be starting until a few more hours yet. Should we kill time?"  
  
Before we kill people, added Spike. "Sure. Who's up for poker?" He made a show of lifting a hand to his mouth and stage whispering to Julia behind it conspiratorially: "He can't refuse the gamble."  
  
"You're on," proved Vicious. "And today, I'm taking your money."  
  
"So you wish to believe," Spike replied cheekily as they walked onto the street toward the closest bar. "Winner gets a free drink."  
  
Two and a half hours later, after a frustrating and curse-evoking card deal, the results were laid down.  
  
"Two pair," declared Vicious triumphantly, his eyes gleaming.  
  
Spike snorted. "There went your three seconds of pleasure. Straight." He slapped his cards onto the table. "Julia, how badly disappointed are you?" He grinned at her.  
  
Julia met his eyes defiantly and pretended desperately that she didn't find him charming even as a syndicate agent. "Devastated," she admitted as she slid her cards onto the table, Spike's cigarette smoke hovering over all their heads. "Me and my royal flush."  
  
Vicous's eyebrows shot up. "Really."  
  
"Screw that!" exclaimed Spike. "Seriously?" He tossed back his head and bellowed out laughter as Julia scooped in red, white, and blue chips. "You'll drain me to the bone, girl. Son me," Spike insisted when Vicious began to reach into his pocket. "Today a women has humbled me in cards. The least I can do is pay for her shot." He flicked a finger at the bartended, who nodded at him. Shaking his head, he whistled. "Damn. That puts me down at least three hundred."  
  
"You're very nearly broke," Julia said in mock shock. "I'd be sympathetic, but...nah." She returned his grin with one of her own.  
  
"Don't look now," joked Spike lightly. Julia giggled. "But I think our man Vicious is having fun."  
  
Vicious wiped the smile from his face, but the glint remained in his eyes. "I am not."  
  
"He's practically glowing," added Julia. "Aren't you, Vicious?"  
  
"No. And we need to get moving." He stood up as the waiter served Julia's whiskey. "Well?" he inquired. "Gonna toast to our night?"  
  
Julia kissed his cheek and looked at Spike mischievously over the glass. "It seems I'll have to. I've had my luck for the evening." With a fast wink at the two of them, she drained the shot. The alcohol burned itself a path down her throat and she slammed the glass onto the table, blinking away the reactive moisture that jumped to her eyes. "Best to you, guys."  
  
"It's nice to know that we have good-luck wishes from a pretty woman," Spike said to Vicious later as they stood together at the corner of an abandoned brick warehouse on the east end of Tharsis. Lin and Shin were stationed a half-block away and several other agents were scattered around the area on standby.  
  
Vicious smiled as the sun lowered so slowly. "Quick and painless then?"  
  
"Quick and painless. I'll let you get home to your girl, huh?" Spike grinned recklessly, shoving the instant jealousy behind him.  
  
"After this," retorted Vicious, "remind me to get you a girl." With that, he took out the gun from his trench coat. Spike took out his Jericho, and together, both men fired one shot. The signal gone off, Lin and Shin were already moving in at breakneck speed, the others getting closer at a slower pace. Spike and Vicious tore into the warehouse.  
  
It was a typical storage hideaway. Boxes labeled for worthless things like lamps held vials and vials of Bloody-Eye. Half-broken suitcases were filled with millions of woolong notes. And lurking non-discreetly in the shadowed corners were at least nine men waiting to protect their supplies and profits.  
  
"Fun group," commented Spike easily.  
  
"I especially like the scared looks in their eyes," Vicious added. "Do you think they'll mind being stabbed?" With almost lazy ease, he drew out his katana, stowing his gun away in the trench coat.  
  
"I could always shoot them if they'd rather," Spike grinned.  
  
Vicious shrugged. "Either way..." He suddenly raced forward and lifted the sword, pressing it to the nearest drug lord's neck. "They're all going to die."  
  
He neatly slit the throat, and blood dripped in large circles on the floor.  
  
Not even a half-hour later, a syndicate truck – labeled as a unit of Ol' Harry's Painting Service – rolled away toward the bigger part of the city with the stash of Bloody-Eye.  
  
"I sort of wish you two hadn't have finished them off so quickly," commented Lin, his softly ambitious smirk passing over his lips. "I've been bored lately."  
  
Shin, his twin brother and Lin's mirror image, crossed his arms and climbed into the front seat of the silver convertible he always pretended had very little value to him. As Lin joined him, he smiled at Vicious and Spike. "Want a ride? That way we won't feel totally useless."  
  
"My destination's only a few blocks away," Vicious told him. "So I'm going to let you feel useless."  
  
"I need to move," Spike grinned. "I'll walk with Vicious."  
  
"Damn, where has our worth gone?" Lin shrugged. "Suit yourselves."  
  
"Say hi to Julia, Vicious," laughed Shin, and the twins zipped off, easing there way speedily through late-night traffic.  
  
Spike and Vicious ambled along steadily, silent at first. This part of town was probably the most relaxed, if not the most exciting. It was well past midnight; most people, being elderly, were sleeping. Lights were out, and Spike started on a cigarette.  
  
"Spike," Vicious said in his low, cold tones after a couple of minutes. "Do you approve of me in a serious relationship with Julia?"  
  
A little taken aback by the question, Spike bit into his cigarette, then looked in disdain at the squeezed roll. Popping it defiantly back in his mouth, his slid his eyes over to Vicious's face. "Odd question. Do you need my approval?"  
  
"Yes." It was said so simply that Spike was surprised again, but gave no visible reaction to it this time.  
  
"Oh." After a moment, he asked, "How serious is it?"  
  
"As serious as it gets without a ring," Vicious responded bluntly, and Spike nodded, pitting himself against the surge of jealousy that threatened to break him.  
  
"I gotcha." He had to try very hard to ignore the twist in his gut when he thought of Julia wrapped around Vicious, the two of them tumbling around in her dark, dusky apartment. He had to try even harder to keep his voice casual. "Well, you're good to her, aren't her?" Spike stuck his hands in the pocket of his dark trench coat, staring at a dim lamppost in the distance. "Not that I mean to pry."  
  
"It's fine." Vicious sounded so detached, and his eyes were obscured by the fall of his pale hair. But Spike didn't need to see those gray orbs to know that they would be cold and hard. "That's why I'm doubting, Spike. I treat her the best I possibly can."  
  
Spike stared at his friend for a moment, and then laughed. "Well, if that's why you're worried..." He shoved a hand through his thick, green hair and found his palms were damp. "I think you're fine, Vicious. You're an okay guy."  
  
They halted together on the stoop of Julia's apartment building. Vicious's eyes did meet Spike's now, and as Speigal had expected, they were no warmer than a sharp pair of icicles.  
  
"Okay," Vicious murmured, his voice low and sounding half-annoyed, "doesn't cut it with her."  
  
It was a good thing that Vicious proceeded into the building, because Spike couldn't think of a damn thing to say.  
  
Julia's smile was bright when she opened her door for them. "Not one, but two handsome men at my door." She raised her eyes to the ceiling above her. "And hungry, I've no doubt."  
  
"Whatcha got?" Spike asked with a grin, nudging into the apartment and teasingly jerking her over.  
  
"Just for that, I should kick you out," she said to him sharply, trying to not smile and failing.  
  
"Whatever, I'm a superior," joked Spike as Vicious was closing the door behind him. He was relieved when neither of them moved to kiss or embrace each other. He took them both for ones who weren't publicly affectionate – he was one of those types himself – and personally, he didn't want to see it.  
  
"Only in your head." Julia shoved him away from her refrigerator, opening it and digging in herself. She had to bend low thanks to her long, black- covered legs, but she managed to come up again with an armful of wrapped hot dogs. "Pass me a pot from the left cabinet, somebody."  
  
Spike turned to obey, but Vicious was already holding one out to her.  
  
She smiled at him. "Thank you." Flicking on the hot water at her sink, she filled the pot and turned on the stovetop. "We'll let these heat for awhile."  
  
"What've you been doing with yourself all night?" inquired Vicious lightly, his own small smile playing on his face.  
  
"Oh, this and that. Flirting with the Elders, beating up cops. The usual." Julia sighed at Vicious's shaking head even as Spike chuckled. "Or getting nice and cozy with Dick Chance's latest novel. Fun murder mystery, since I unfortunately missed out today."  
  
"You didn't want to be there," Spike told her with a light tongue; but his eyes could still see the blood pouring from the drug lords, blood spilled with his own two hands. He suddenly moved over to the sink and let water flow over his fingers. At Julia's amused look, he said in defense, "I support hygiene."  
  
"Of course," she replied exaggeratedly. "I certainly wouldn't suspect you of a complex."  
  
He flicked water at her, and she glared, her lips twitching. "Watch the hot dogs, Spiegel." She disappeared into her bedroom and came back moments later. "Vicious and I are playing chess."  
  
"Oh, good. Now I can soothe my pride – you hurt it earlier with poker," said Vicious. He sat down at her small four-person table. "This you can't win."  
  
"Probably not," she agreed with a laugh. "But I'll try anyway."  
  
As they were standing up pawns and knights and rooks, Spike grinned at the two of them. It was easier, he decided, to convince himself he didn't want Julia to direct that smile at him instead of his friend if he was acting goofy. "I play loser."  
  
Not an hour later, the hot dogs were eaten and Vicious was just capturing Julia's white knight with his black king, advancing steadily on the queen.  
  
"Damn," Julia muttered just as Vicious's beeper went off. He pulled the tiny device form his pocket to read the code and nodded.  
  
"Damn," Vicious agreed.  
  
"Do you need me to go with you?" asked Spike, pushing away from the wall he was leaning against, ready in case he was required.  
  
Vicious held up a hand. "No. This is minor; the Elders have just called me in for a quick report. Still, I don't think I'll come back tonight. Those old asses always wear me out."  
  
Spike smirked. "We could take 'em," he joked.  
  
Vicious smiled back. "If I was stupid, I'd make use of that. But..." He stood up and went for his coat. "Finish my game, Spike. Show down this woman who took are money."  
  
"Gladly." Spike plopped down in his friend's seat and grinned wolfishly at Julia. "Tag-team. Too bad you're all alone."  
  
"I'm not afraid of show-offs. Hold that thought." She walked to Vicious and straightened the lapels of his trench for him. "See you tomorrow."  
  
He did no more than squeeze her shoulder, but that one, short act showed possession, control. Julia held her breathe, smile frozen in place, so she wouldn't wince.  
  
"Goodnight," he said softly to her. "'Night, Spike."  
  
"'Night." Spike watched the door close behind him, then folded his arms. "Your turn."  
  
"Shit." Dropping back down in her seat, she stared at the pieces. "Shit," she repeated.  
  
Spike shrugged. "We can start over."  
  
"Don't you go easy on me. He's got both my knights, okay. He hasn't gotten my queen yet... You know what," said Julia, reaching for her beer bottle and downing a gulp. "Sometimes I think this is how Vicious works. His strategy is a lot like playing chess. He knocks down the little guys until he gets to the big man. Then he crushes him."  
  
Vicious inclined his head in thought, propped his right leg on his left knees. His position was a comfortable one, lax to let him think better. "That sounds about right. He can be ruthless."  
  
"He often is," she murmured.  
  
"Well." Spike watched her with his garnet eyes. In the low-hanging lamp above the table, her hair shimmered like the gold he always thought of when he looked at her. Her skin looked so fair and her hands were delicate as she tapped a finger on the table while she contemplated her chess pieces. "He's a confusing guy."  
  
"Yes." Her tone suddenly dismissed the topic of their mutual friend. With a hand that, Spike noted, was trembling just the smallest bit, she moved her last pawn forward.  
  
Spike claimed it with his rook and instead of retracting his hand, he set it on her shaking one. "Julia."  
  
Julia raised her head, trembling fiercer now. "Tonight, I was scared, Spike. I was scared that something really bad would happen to you two. In a really short time, I've come to care for you and Vicious more than anyone else. You two are the first people to really seem to give a damn about me."  
  
Spike's eyebrows lowered in too-deep concern. Watch your step, Spiegel, he thought. "Of course we do, Julia." Before his hand turned to lead, he worked to draw it back, but Julia turned her palm and grasped his. When he looked into the blue eyes he thought about too much, he saw desperation. "What is it?"  
  
"I just..." Her shoulders sagged.  
  
Nearly out of instinct, he went to his feet and pulled her from her chair, then gathered her into his arms. "It's okay, Julia."  
  
"Spike." She shook her head. "It isn't okay. This is too new for me; the syndicate...Vicious's attention..."  
  
"He really does care about you," he assured her after a long bout of silence. Even so, he couldn't find the energy to stop holding her now that she was here.  
  
"I know. I know that," she said. "But I don't think he realizes—"  
  
The clock on her while beeped out the hour, and they jumped away from each other. Spike's every nerve tingled both pleasantly and painfully. Julia looked over and saw it was one in the morning. They'd been standing there for nearly half-an-hour.  
  
"It's really late," Spike said. "I should go."  
  
"Yeah." Julia ran a hand over her hair. "You should."  
  
"Yeah." Spike pulled on his coat, felt the weight of the gun hidden in there. He planted his hand on the doorknob and begged for the energy to turn it. "I'll see you whenever."  
  
"Whenever," she nodded. Julia couldn't stop staring at him. Why couldn't she?  
  
Spike blinked, wondering. Wondering... "Oh, hell," he muttered and stomped back over to her.  
  
Julia raised her arms and let her fingers dig into his hair as his lips touched down on hers and sent the searching heat blasting through her entire body. She responded, moaning when his hands slid over her hips and up her back to cup the back of her neck.  
  
So this was what it was like to kiss her. He pressed two fingers into her neck, urging her head back so he could deepend the kiss. It burned him and froze him at the same time. Ir robbed him of breath, but it wasn't uncomfortable. When her teeth lightly scraped his bottom lip, he barely heard the low growl at the pit of his throat.  
  
Her hands raced over his back, to his cheeks, all across his face. "Spike," she murmured into his mouth.  
  
At that, Spike jerked back and gasped for breath, his fist clutched on his stomach as though he intended to punch himself. "Oh, hell."  
  
Julia's own breath came out raggedly. "Did we almost..."  
  
"Maybe," he said. "I really have to go. Bye."  
  
She didn't reply as he disappeared out the door. Her lips were trembling. Everything was trembling. Helpless, boneless, she simply collapsed to the floor, hand-mussed hair tumbling over her shoulders. She could still smell him, good God, she could smell his cologne and his cigarettes and she could taste the beer he'd drank.  
  
She stared wide-eyed at the door he'd shut. Echoing him, she said two words.  
  
"Oh, hell."  
  
There's chapter three! Please leave a review to let me know how I'm doing with this. This is my first Bebop fic, and I want to know if I should run away screaming from this fandom or stay put. Tell me what you think!  
  
-GG 


	4. Ease My Mind

Hey, I'm back! You guys, you are the best readers I've ever had. So I feel like I owe you all a sincere apology for how slowly this story is updated. It's been nearly a year and this is just chapter four. ;; But hopefully, you can understand the process of this fic. It's very dark, very deep, and for me, I need to feel a little depressed to write the story. Because we all know Vicious, Spike, and Julia were not the happiest of people. Although, this chapter _is _a lighter one. 

Again, I've never gotten reviews as intelligent as the ones I get for this fic. I don't know if it's the whole Bebop fandom or just the Spike/Julia fans. Either way, I hope you all keep reading. And please check out my Cowboy Bebop fic _Begin_, an introspective one-shot revolving around Vicious and his desire to face Spike. 

Warnings: Depressing thoughts, violent instincts.

Note: Chapter title is from "Call Me, Call Me," by Yoko Kanno.

Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop and do not claim the characters, setting, or anything else of relevance as my own.

--- Kites Without Strings --- Part Four: Ease My Mind

Julia couldn't stop shaking.  And she hated that she couldn't, that she couldn't seem to get any kind of control over herself.  As she sat in a table chair by the small window in her kitchen, she looked out at the Martian afternoon with eyes that were dull and sullen.  With a mug of steaming coffee in her hand, clothed in a faded black sweat-suit, and hair tumbling in snarling tangles around her shoulders, it would seem to anyone that she wasn't quite awake yet.  But Julia was as alert as could be.

She couldn't get it out of her mind.  It had been three days since she'd seen Spike; three days since he had kissed her, since she had let him, and the taste of him was still terrorizing her, the scent of cigarette smoke and gun powder that he carried with him was still haunting her.  It was like being a child and smelling your mother's perfume or your father cologne, knowing you could wallow, dreamlike, in that smell and you would be forever pleased.

But, Julia reflected, she was all grown up.  And her parents, now long dead, could never fill the void she felt every living instant.  What she had felt kissing Spike…it was like a fire, alternating between blazing flames and peaceful embers.  Heat and warmth in the same feel, desire and contentment in the same beat.  But it had also felt like invisible restraints had snaked their way up and coiled around her, pulling her back; keeping her from what would finally make her happy.

Julia wrenched her eyes from the window and drank from her mug, not sorry when the coffee scalded her tongue.  _Easy, _she told herself.  _That's too deep._

When a cool hand pressed against her neck and contrasted with the burning in her throat, she had to force herself not to tighten up.  The smell of clean soap and wet man signaled that Vicious had finished with his shower in her bathroom.  Yesterday had been, as he had called it, a convenience, and he'd been able to stay the night. 

He bent over and wrapped her arms around her and the chair.  "Someone's thinking about serious matters," said the diamond-scratcher voice.

Julia quickly pulled herself back into her daily charade, the role of the indifferent and amused syndicate princess.  "Serious matters?"  She laughed and turned in his embrace, lips upturned.  "Me?"

"Mm."  He kissed her and his lips were so cold it would seem as though he had bathed in ice.  His fingers slipped into her matted hair.  "There's a first time for everything."

She kissed him back for an accurate three seconds, then stood up and moved the chair back to the table.  Draining her coffee, she set the mug in the sink.  "You'll be late," she told him.

Vicious smirked.  "I'm never late."

He never was, by whatever force he possessed.  If he wanted to, he could find a way to spend at least thirty more minutes with her.  Julia made herself smile.  "You will be today if you don't head over there.  I'll be right behind you.  I just need to make myself look some kind of presentable." 

"You look beautiful now.  Maybe if you lost the sweatshirt."  He grinned at her responsive expression, teeth bared in a way that looked fierce rather than amused.  "Anyway, there's a banquet tonight.  You should come."

Translated correctly, he was saying, _I need you there to be the damsel next to the knight.  Make me look good.  _Vicious thought no one could see his intention of rising even further up in the Red Dragon syndicate.  Julia poked her hands in her pockets so he wouldn't see her clench them.  "Of course I will.  Only fools pass up free food."  And only fools ate it even though it was poisoned, Julia thought.

"Good.  It's at _Cobra_.  I escort you there at nine."  Vicious stepped up to her and took her hands, reveled in the warmth of them.  She was the only person, he thought, who had ever fully accepted a cold man like him.  "I'll see you at work."  Leaning over, he kissed her forehead.

He made it sound so casual.  Julia locked the door behind him and leaned against it.  Like they were a pair of normal people, rather than members of the most dangerous syndicate in space.  But they were far from normal.

And Julia was far from ready for the day.  She glanced at her clock, registering that she needed to be out the door in about forty minutes so she would make the meeting today.  Fortunately, it would just be a quick instruction enforcement for newer members, and Spike most likely wouldn't be there.  That saved her a lot of stress.

Stripping down and stepping into the shower, Julia wondered how Spike was doing.  A calm, cool guy like that couldn't possibly be as flustered as he'd seemed three nights ago.

---

Oh, yes he could.  That's what Spike would have said if a close buddy like Lin had voiced Julia's thought. 

If he hadn't been able to get Julia completely off of his mind before, he couldn't get her off at _all _now.  Hormones, libido, temper, and ego all swirled through Spike like a badly-mixed cocktail.  However, this was something he couldn't just spit out and wash the taste away with water.

If Spike haunted her, then Julia possessed him.  He'd never felt this way about a woman before.  In the past, a quick bout of sex or a long make-out session and heavy petting could usually fix the problem.  And though Spike hadn't gotten the chance to try either of those tactics on Julia, he was fairly certain that it wouldn't help.

He wanted to know her.  Badly.  He wanted to know how her mind worked, what she thought about…anything…how she lived, how she _wanted _to live.  What could have forced her to join the Red Dragons?  And if she did it willingly what kind of woman did that?

Questions tackled him from all sides.  Many, he knew, would never get answers to them.  He could always ask, sometime when he and Julia were alone.  But when the woman you were so fascinated with was the serious girlfriend of your best friend, you tended to naturally stay away from anything that could even risk leading to confrontation.

That was another thing.  What drew Julia to Vicious?  Spike winced as he continued to walk down the red-tinted sidewalks of Tharsus.  That particularly phrasing didn't sound very nice; many women were attracted to Vicious, of course.  But just as many had seemed to be repelled by him.  Vicious' nature was not that of a very warm, welcoming man.  So how to Julia react to that?  Was she one of those simple girls who thought she wanted a dangerous man?  Or was she the kind that required a mean look to whoever she got involved with, playing off past experiences?

Those were definitely questions he had no right to be querying about.  Why shouldn't Julia enjoy Vicious' company?  Why shouldn't she even maybe fall in love with Vicious?

Spike kicked at a chunk of loose cement.  Because she had been as needy for him and he had been for her three nights ago, that was why.  Damn it. 

Women like her; women that were different from other women were impossible to get away from.  They intrigue, they inspire, and then they crush you.  At least that's how all the sob stories Spike heard at bars described their actions.  And Julia was definitely a woman that was different from others.

She had this quality to her, Spike decided as he walked into the conference room to fulfill the order he'd been given the night before.  A quality that had his curiosity blazing. 

His stomach dropped when his eyes landed automatically on her.  _Why, oh why,_ he thought dramatically, _did Shin ask me to do this for him_?  And a better question was why did he accept?  He'd known very well that Julia would be here.  She'd only been a syndicate member for a week and a half. 

It was because Spike Spiegel could face his problems head on.  He was no coward.

Julia turned her head from where she was sitting at the table.  Her afternoon-blue eyes widened and stared at him as her face paled subtly. 

Correction, Spike thought.  He was _definitely _a coward.  Deliberately forcing his garnet eyes away from hers, he took a seat that was far from hers.  As soon as he had, the light chatter died and young, eager faced all were in his direction. 

Not one for liking to be thought of as particularly important, Spike cleared his throat.  "Normally," he said on a whim, "people in this position are gonna tell you the gist of the Red Dragons in a very intricate, elegant way, and then they're gonna tell you the same thing, except the second time they say it bluntly.  If any of you end up working under me, Spike Spiegel, you'll probably realize that I enjoy doing things somewhat differently from everyone else."  His eyes were drawn to Julia's again.  "So here's the blunt way first."  He looked at the young man beside him, then down the row of people across from him.  "If you betray this group, or if you give up on this group…"  His eyebrows lowered seriously.  "We kill you."  He tried very hard to ignore the sharp gasps and ashen faces, but he knew he'd recall all of it for years to come.  He never forgot any of the terror he saw in those who thought they were rising to the top of the city. 

Taking a deep breath, he forced his mouth to smile.  "Now," he said, chuckling to lighten the mood, "here's the intricate way."  He began the routine speech for newcomers, hating every syllable.

---

Popular talk was that Spike was always in control of every situation he was in.  Not so, he had to admit when Julia followed him outside of the small building the Red Dragons kept as an all-purpose conference area.  She had decided as well that she was no coward.

"Impressive" was all she said.

He smirked because he felt it would help his confidence level.  "It's a rehearsed thing."

"But of course, that doesn't mean that the syndicate doesn't mean every word."  She smiled, hoping it made her look more coolheaded than she felt.  "It's not too hard to understand how organizations like this worked."

"And you joined anyway." 

She wondered at his neutral tone.  "I did.  Aren't you going to ask me how come?"

"That isn't my business."  He jammed his hands into the pockets of his trench coat.  It would be a cool night.  "It's never anyone else's business but your own for why you'd join a crime syndicate to live with bad-doers."

"Hm."  It wasn't an amused sound, just an acknowledging one.  "It is very personal, I suppose."

Spike gave her a sideways glance.  She looked too beautiful, and with her lips painted dark red, it was too easy to remember the…er…indulged weakness of three nights before.  "Are you going to the banquet at _Cobra_?  I know lower officers don't have to come."

She nodded.  "Vicious has to be there.  And I…"  She fought not to frown as she pushed the words out.  "I want to be there with him."  When neither of them said nothing, she asked back, "So you will be there?"

"I have to be there, too."

"Right."  She bit her lip.  "Where are we walking, Spike?"

Both of them stopped.

"Um," Spike said.  "I'm not sure."  He looked around.  They were on Marx street, about two blocks down from Annie's shop.  He grinned at the sordid scenario.  "We just kind…walked."  Feeling suddenly lighter, he snorted lightly, then continued into a chuckle, then let out a full blown laugh. 

Julia smiled as well and couldn't stop her giggles.  Even as they laughed together, it gave her a startling jolt that this man could so easily help her relax – by doing nothing!   

"Why don't we go to Annie's," he suggested.  "We've got time to kill, right?  You're not meeting Vicious?"

"Not until later.  And I'd love to go to Annie's."

"Well then."  Pleased that they could breathe the same air without choking, he out an arm.  She took it and off they went.  "You've never met her, have you?"

"No, but I've heard a lot."  She grinned. 

"Hearing isn't good enough."  Several minutes later, the bell above the shop door jingled and Annie looked up from her small TV.

"Spike!" she exclaimed, rounding out from behind the counter.  "Come see me."

Spike walked to her and wrapped his thin, long arms around her slightly bulky waist.  "Hi, Annie."

"God, you look thinner every time I see you, kid."  Annie set her fists against her hips.  "Eating right, Spike?"

"Have I ever skipped a meal?" Spike joked, his grin wide and tantalizing.

Julia mentally berated herself.  Tantalizing?  _Oh, for God's sake!_

"Never in your life," Annie agreed, giving out a full-bellied laugh.  Her knowing eyes, with only a few wrinkles on the sides of them, moved past him to Julia.  "Hi," she said bluntly.

Julia smiled.  Though, as she'd seen, Annie's shop carried everything from candy to porn to .44 shotguns, (and more, as a syndicate operative) the woman herself was likeable in an instant.  "Hello," she said softly.

"Oh, that's nothing," Annie declared, pushing Spike out of the way and enfolding Julia in a hug just short of bear-like.  "When I welcome someone, I welcome them, honey."

Julia didn't know if the pressure on her spine forced her to or not, but she found herself hugging the elder lady back.  "I see," she chuckled.  They stepped back.  "I'm Julia Mandir."

"Ahhhh," Annie said wisely.  "Vicious's."

Spike's smile, which had grown impossibly bigger upon seeing Annie embrace Julia, faltered.  It was a little awakening to hear Annie say it like that.  Not "Vicious's girlfriend" or even "Vicious's friend," just "Vicious's."  As though Julia was something Vicious lawfully possessed. 

Julia nodded, a bit disconcerted by the description herself.  "Yes, I…  You know Vicious?"

"More to say, Vicious knows me," Annie told her.  She tightened the brown bun at the back of her head.  "Everyone knows me."

"I have to say," Julia admitted.  "I'm glad I do.  You're a—"  She stopped when Annie set a hand on her arm.  A man and a little boy, father and son obviously, were just leaving the store. 

"Come again!" Annie called as the bell jingled them out.  She waited a beat while they walked away then turned back to the only two visitors in the otherwise empty store.  "Yes, dear," she said, "I supply the Red Dragons with whatever weapons they want.  Much like Doohan supplies them with vehicles."

"Doohan?"

"She's new," Spike smiled.  "Great guy, Doohan."

"I'll say."  Annie grinned.  "Crazy loon, but great.  Anyway, what're you kids doing around here?"  Her eyes were amused as she arched her brows at Spike.  "'Causing trouble in my place of business?"

"I've come to convince you to come away with me and have a mad affair."  Spike kissed her cheek. 

"You don't need an old lady for that," she laughed.  "You could have enough with better-looking girls.  Use that lyin' tongue o' yours on 'em."

"So it's working then?"

"Not a chance, kiddo."  She patted his cheek.  "I know you too well."

"Annie kinda raised me," Spike informed Julia, who hung on every word.  "She's a cradle-robber."

"Paying debts to your father," Annie objected.

Julia waited for either of them to explain that particular phrase, but neither did, and so she kept quiet.  Families weren't her business.  And Spike and Annie were the best family she'd seen in a long time.  "You did a good job," she said instead.

Annie had to smile.  A syndicate woman who was with Vicious, who had enough sex appeal to lure the entire Italian mafia, was polite as well – and sincere, it seemed.  "Thanks.  It's something I've always been sorta sensitive about, ya know?"

"I'm sure."  Julia wished her mother had felt that way.  But the Mandirs had never been what one could call a wholesome family.  "Well."  She met Spike's eyes, and the breath backed up in her lungs.  She coughed, forcing it out.  Her expression never wavered.  "You must be proud."

"As proud as the guardian of a hoodlum can be.  Now," Annie said decisively, "I need to close up, and no doubt you've both got places to be that don't include boring old ladies.  Julia," she said, sticking out her hand, "it was nice to meet you."

"It was a pleasure."  Laughing, Julia shook her head and bent over, hugging the shorter women.  "Have a good night, Annie."

"'Night, hon.  'Night, Spike."

"'Night, Annie."  Spike followed Julia outside, feeling the blast of humid air.  He was still a little dazed.  Seeing Julia talk to Annie like that, so naturally, so kindly…  It was like living in a really good dream.

A dream.  Julia turned around, and he saw her soft eyes, shining sapphires discreet beneath a tumble of melted gold bangs.  When he looked at her, he thought of dreams.

"It's getting a little late," she said suddenly, startling Spike out of his reverie.  "I should probably get home and start getting ready."

"Me too."  He ran a hand through his frizzed hair.  "Do you want me to walk you?"

She grinned.  "Ganymede casino, remember, Spike?"

He scoffed.  "Right.  Ganymede casino.  I'll see you later then."  With Vicious.

Her thought had been the same.  "All right.  Bye for now."

"For now," he agreed.  As they each turned and walked in separate directions, he told himself not to look back. 

He did anyway, and saw her eyes staring back at him.  He smirked.  She smiled.

And both walked on, laughing.  They were at ease.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, all, I know this chapter is a bit shorter than usual, but hopefully the next part will be up to the usual length.  Thanks for reading, and please leave a review!  


	5. Where All The Shooting Stars Are Gone

Here it is, and with not so long of a wait! Hurrah!

Disclaimer: I disclaim ownership of Cowboy Bebop.

Note: Chapter title is from "Flying Teapot," by Yoko Kanno.

--- Kites Without Strings --- Part Five: Where All The Shooting Stars Are Gone

By Gundam Girl

The clubs are Mars were special. They had a certain feel to them, an always-lingering sensuality that curled around each person there, whether in the form of a date or the smoke from a used cigarette. They tended to each person's preference, from the salad bar for the vegetarian of the twelve-ounce steak for the hearty meat lover.

Vicious despised them. There was too much life, too much warm blood. _Cobra _practically sizzled with it tonight, great spurts of warmth puffing like steam from everywhere. Body heat threatened to melt flesh. These places were far too kind for someone like him, he mused. He glanced dance at the woman on his arm.

Julia had pinned up her hair with a jade-colored, oval clip that rested on the very crown of her head. Slim lines of hair fell down her temples in light waves, curling at the very end. With her makeup carefully crafted, her hair was like sleek gold against marble. Her dress was full, dark green like the hairclip, with a bodice that was tight against her bosom down her waist and fluffed out slightly from there to her ankles. The dress was sleeveless, but a white, gauzy wrap was balanced between her forearms and around her back.

Vicious liked the look of her. Not merely because she was obviously the most beautiful woman in the club, but because of the subtle symbolisms in her choice of dress. The deep green stood out, lured, but evoked cautiousness; like poison. That strip of cleanness on her wrap and the pale smoothness of her skin that it all defined were like an assurance of innocence.

Warning and welcome in one small package, Vicious mused. Like a trap. He smirked faintly. He always did approve of a good trap. This one was his own.

When she suddenly turned her head up and smiled at him, he didn't think that his twist of lips might be intimidating. But Julia had to work to keep her face pleasant.

She cleared her throat. "Is there any definite point in being here?"

He let out a low chuckle that was more like gravel crunching beneath feet than any actual mirth. "You should know by now that with the Red Dragons, there's always some ulterior motive. Note how new agents weren't specifically needed here tonight."

Julia pressed her red-painted lips together. "They just need people with experience then."

"They need them, and they'll get them." He fell silent as a waiter showed them to a round table draped in starch white linen, and Vicious courteously pulled out Julia's chair for her. "Wine?"

"Yes." She accepted the slim glass of chardonnay from the perhaps too-appreciative waiter and tipped it back elegantly. The waited cast one last look at the neck of her dress and shuffled discreetly away. If Vicious had noticed, he hadn't said anything, and Julia breathed a small sigh of relief.

She berated herself in the next instant. Why the hell should she be relieved? Vicious wasn't one for making scenes over little things like horny waiters. He wasn't one for making scenes at all, as far as Julia knew. He preferred to keep things private and close, to keep any and all affairs within his arm-length should he need to reach out and pull it back to him. Nothing escaped Vicious. He was too calm for that.

That _was _a relief. People who tended to blow up lost sight of themselves and their goal. Emotions muddled things that should be clean and simple. Passionate people knew more failure than success. People like…

_Damn it. _When _Cobra_'s main doors opened again, she could tell without looking who the newest arrival was. The scent of him, cigarettes and night air, carried over to their table and made Julia's fingers tighten on the stem of her glass. Damn him, she thought, for being so noticeable. Damn him for being so memorable.

In every way, damn Spike Spiegel.

Spike was damning a thing or two when he walked into the black-tie snazz house. Unlike Vicious, he liked clubs. He appreciated this one with its shimmering crystal chandeliers and complicated tapestries. Hell, he would even go so far as to say he liked the short-skirted uniform for the waitresses. But this place was too tight-necked. He liked the others kind of clubs Mars was famous for, specifically the jazz huts where saxophones and trumpets were every bit a part of the décor as the scarred bar and used ashtrays. Damn the lot of high-class sequin-showers.

Finishing lighting a cigarette, he raised his eyes and nearly caught his thumb in the cap of his lighter.

Dear God, and he thought she'd looked good in leather. Spike inhaled sharply on his cigarette and forced himself to exhale it. Through the wisps of smoke, he saw her with her green gown, her white wrap, and her wine. He took special notice of the golden drops dangling from her earlobes. They matched her hair.

Why, he asked whatever force might possibly know the answer, did she have to be like that? Like a glimmering emerald among a box of graying diamonds? He'd seen women, a lot of them like the tittering ones that dotted the banquet room, who had caused an impact in him before. Julia had taken a shot to his head and scored a direct hit.

Damn that, too.

He didn't have a date, Julia mused. Was he a man who preferred to go it alone; be the lone mystery man with a cigarette and a tie not entirely straight? Maybe "preferred" wasn't the right word, but she wasn't exactly sure what phrases described him. Spike _was _a mystery. One she wanted to solve even though she wished it wasn't so.

She was disturbed from her thoughts as Vicious' icy hand fell on her bare shoulder. "How hungry are you?"

"I'll just take a salad," she replied absently. She had to force her eyes to stay on his.

He smirked the tiniest bit again. Leaning over, he muttered into her ear, "I can always feed you later."

She begged her stomach not to complain. "I do need some sustenance, Vicious."

He kept his gaze on her for a moment longer, than motioned for a waiter. Placing an order for Julia's salad and a steak for himself, a drank from his own wine and smiled. Angling his head, he called out, "Spike!" but his voice was still like velvet-covered steel. Julia didn't fathom he would ever be softer.

"Vicious," Spike said, humor blanketing his voice like a uniform. As his garnet eyes fell on her, they shimmered just a bit brighter. "Julia. Good evening."

"Hi, Spike." She inclined her head and wished to God her fingers weren't shaking. Mentally swearing, she smiled, hoping it looked genuine. "Was the traffic bad?"

She was straining. Vicious didn't seem to notice it, but Spike certainly did. And because he could see the small pulse thrumming at the side of her neck, he shoved his hands in his pockets. He couldn't touch her and ease that franticness.

"Not too bad," he replied. "At least not for me. My cab must've cut off at least six cars." He pounded a fist to his chest. "Had to make sure my heart was still working when he finally stopped."

"Hm. He can face gunfire and is scared of mad taxi drivers." Vicious shook his head. "You're pathetic."

"I'm not _scared _of them, I _disapprove _of them," countered Spike. "Notice the vocabulary I used for your benefit."

The three of them laughed, but only Vicious was truly – or at least half – amused.

Bravely, Spike opted to join them for dinner instead of sitting with Lin and Shin or Mao. Annie was even here tonight, and although Spike hadn't bothered to find out what was happening at this particular event, he noted it had to be important for even the Red Dragon's main supplier to show up. But he remained with Vicious and Julia, forcing himself to eat a plate of chicken and vegetables despite the anxiety rolling around in his stomach at the most subtle of Vicious actions; his hand falling onto Julia's shoulder, his fingers brushing over the back of her neck, his lips pressing discreetly to her cheek.

He toughed it out, but once, he was certain he heard Julia sigh when Vicious took her hand. Of course, it could have been a happy sigh; the two certainly did look as though they were in love (something that, in Vicious' case, was hard to discern). But Spike had the odd feeling the Julia wasn't completely happy.

He crushed his current cigarette in one of the dainty glass ashtrays available at every table and folded his arms, averting his gaze as Vicious pushed one of her curls over her shoulder. Damn, it was gonna be a hella long night.

Or was it, he corrected himself as he finished off the last of his beer and leaned back. Mao was seen standing up from his seat next to Annie and walking to the center of the banquet room. He raised a hand and everyone's voices ceased in a matter of seconds. The respect filtering from brain to brain was awe-inspiring. Spike grinned a bit. Not bad for a man entering his late fifties and not exactly caught up in modern-times.

"Some of you know why you have been called to gather here tonight." Mao was smiling. "The fact is, we of the Red Dragon Clan have a strong wish to honor a certain person. He has been with our family for close to three years now. Throughout the course of his service, we have come to see that he is a man full of ambition, of bravado, and of healthy character. His name is Jusuke Karuma." Mao smiled thinly at a man with thick reddish hair and violet-blue eyes that had been seated at his table as well. Slowly, in the fluid way of moving that every Syndicate member was to some extent gifted with, he pulled out a smooth-barreled Glock from the inside of his suit jacket. His deceivingly pleasant expression never changed. "Congratulations, Mr. Karuma," he said softly.

Karuma's face, which had been filled with satisfied surprise before, broke down into pale terror. Amid the fancy perfumes and expensive colognes, Spike smelled the man's swear and his eyes hardened.

"You managed to feed information to another Syndicate for nearly two full weeks," Mao continued, aiming the weapon steadily at Karuma's heart. "And to the Jade Lions, no less. Gaining money takes ambition, betraying us takes bravado, but I was wrong about your character. That, Karuma, is simply stupid." Mao lowered the gun. "Proceed with annihilating his membership in this Clan."

"Mr. Yenrai!" Karuma exclaimed in a cracking voice even as two broad-shouldered men grabbed him under his arms and hauled him from the table. "Sir, forgiveness, please! To survive, one has to—"

"There is always conflict," Yenrai acknowledged. "And conflict, you understand, must always be dealt with." He lifted his wineglass from the table and held it high in the air. "Let us toast our friend, Mr. Karuma."

Simultaneously, the Red Dragon agents raised their glasses as everyone looked on grimly.

"No! Mr. Yenrai! I had to make a _choice_!"

Julia watched with somewhat sad eyes as the door closed behind Karuma and his captors. _And you made the wrong one_, she thought.

Vicious' voice cut across her mind like a stream of freezing air as the chatter resumed as though nothing had happened. "It's no use getting sad. When you betray this Clan, any person in it, you are wiped out. It is a matter of retaining honor, dear."

"So he is dead?"

Vicious looked at his gold watch. It had been ten seconds since Karuma had been taken out. "Yes," he said, certain. "The hearse is probably pulling away from the curb as we speak."

_So, _she realized, _this is why the newer members weren't encouraged to come._

"God, Vicious, you're such a depressing guy tonight." Spike was shaking another cigarette from a black case that had been stowed away in his jacket. It was odd to think that a situation like this made him jumpy, even though he had grown up with the Red Dragons and had seen this procession a hundred times or more. He shook his head at his friend and the woman to keep the mood light. "Lighten the hell up, will ya?"

Vicious smiled cordially. "You've always been more cheerful than me, Spike."

"No kidding." He lit the cig and inhaled deeply. "Right now though, I really wanna get outta here."

"Haha. So whereas you're cheerful, I get to handle all the bloody scenes. Fine then." Vicious stood up, happy to note Julia did as well. "Where will you be going?"

"I thought I might try _Playnote _and see who's playing. Jerry can really blow a trumpet." He aimed a wink at Julia. "Whaddya say? Wanna ditch the stiff and run away with me?"

Julia grinned, prepared to shoot back a smart comment, when Vicious's fingers tightened on her shoulder.

"Actually, why don't you go with him?" Vicious said. "I can promise you'll have a lot more fun with him. The most we're going to do here is decide what kind of vegetable platters to have available at Karuma's funeral. Go have some fun." Julia's spine straightened as he brushed his hand over it. "Perhaps later you'll be more relaxed then."

Julia knew what was later, and she bit her lip. "If you think I should," she began.

"I do. Play some silly drinking game that I would be bad at." Vicious took her hand and placed it in Spike cigarette-free one. "I'm trusting you not to lose to her, my friend. She can really put it away."

Spike mouth was straight as he nodded a response and began to lead Julia away. Feeling like he'd been put in a pinch without his knowing, he flicked a sideways glance at her lovely face.

He didn't think there was any outcome _but _to lose to her; her and the feelings she lit up in him.

---

"_Playnote, _huh?" Julia smiled as they walked along the Mars sidewalk. She had long since taken her hand out of Spike's. "A jazz man, Speigel?"

"A big one," he nodded. "I like the classics. Armstrong, Mariano, you name it. _Summertime_'s my favorite."

"Old one," she remarked.

"Great one," he retorted. "And anyway, at this place, you can't be dressed like that."

She responded by lifting her chin. "Jealous of the money?"

"Afraid of it. They won't give you anything but water in case you spill a drink on yourself and try to sue them for it."

Her eyes glimmered. "Water ruins silk, too."

"You've just proved my point. Let's get you changed, honey." He steered her to a curb and hailed them down a cab. "And then I'll show you what a good time is."

---

Half-an-hour later, Spike hadn't been able to object to the dark blue vinyl halter top and tight black skirt Julia had put on in favor of the dress. Her hair was down and teased enough to give it a wild look, the ends curling from the time spent pinned up. She was like the human form of a lioness, power lying beneath a graceful countenance. At least that's what Spike had thought of when trying to ignore the urge to press his lips just beneath where her earrings dangled.

"I don't understand," she told him as they were getting out of the cab that had driven them to _Playnote_, "why you can wear a semi-dressy suit and I'd get burned in a nice dress."

"Because they know me here, and I buy their expensive drinks. Management won't let anyone say anything." His grin was quick and made Julia's heart thump wickedly but she didn't have time to feel its effect before they went inside and she was surprised.

It wasn't loud or crowded like a club. There were booths, a few four-sided tables scattered around, and of course, the long mahogany bar with three or four empty stools.

"Ladies first." He extended a hand and Julia made her way over to the bar, Spike behind her with his hands in his pockets. Maybe the skirt was a little _too _tight. With that and the strappy high-heels give her legs a dangerously appealing look, Spike had to bite back a low whistle. _Keep your animal instincts to yourself._

He slid onto the stool next to the one she chose and shot a smirk at the bartender. "Busy night, eh, Warren?"

Warren looked up from the Guinness he was building, saw Spike, saw Julia, and hastened to make sure his toupee was on straight. "Happily so, Spike. What can I get you and your girl here?"

"This is just a friend," Spike grinned, making Warren's eyebrows lift, "and I'll take a passion-fruit rum. Julia?"

"Martini," she told Warren, "dry, please."

"You got it, ma'am. I take it this's on the gentleman here?"

Spike drummed his long fingers on the bar. "Why the hell does everybody think I'm some kinda delinquent?"

"Because you _are_," Julia said, giggling a bit.

Spike looked at her, watched her clear blue eyes glimmer beneath the dim bar lights, and smiled lightly. "Yeah," he replied, his voice soft. "I guess I am."

Heat rushed through her by simply pitting her gaze against his. _Damn it, Spike. If this wasn't the wrong time…_

"Rum and a martini." Warren placed the drinks in front of them. "Let me know if you want anything else, Spike. Oh, by the way, Jerry's up next, and Curt," he jerked his head at the man onstage playing piano music that trickled through the house, "is almost done. You kids enjoy yourselves."

"So are you Jerry's patron or something?" asked Julia, sipping her drink and keeping her eyes on him.

Spike chuckled, drinking from his own glass and wishing it would actually succeed in cooling him down. "Or something," he agreed and turned in the stool to face the stage as Curt stood, nodded the customers and exited stage left as Jerry came in stage right.

Jerry was a short man, not past five-six, if Julia was any judge. He had fairly shaggy hair that was tinged with purple, and he sat on a low stool onstage, trumpet in hand. Adjusting the microphone a bit, he lifted his instrument, and, winking, let the music spill forth.

By the fourth beat, a women dressed in a light green spring dress was onstage with another mic held up to her mouth. At the fourth beat, she joined Jerry with her voice.

"Summertime…and the livin' is easy…" 

Spike turned back to Julia. "Jerry and Gretchen always open with this one." Amusement dancing in his eyes, he stood up and held out a hand. "Come and dance with me, Julia."

Julia's eyes widened fractionally. "Do what? I don't dance."

"Fish're jumpin'…and the cotton is high…" 

"You don't go to jazz clubs but that's where you are," Spike said. "You don't dance, but that's what you'll do."

Julia's expression was suspicious even as she slipped her fingers into his. "I don't get the feeling that you dance either, Spike Speigel."

Spike's garnet eyes seemed to smile by themselves. "You wanna know something weird?" He led her over to the dance floor with long, even steps and slowly let a hand slide around her waist. "When I'm with you, I start to think I can do anything." He shrugged. "I think you inspire me."

"Daddy's rich…and Mama's good-lookin'…" 

She set the hand he wasn't holding over his sturdy shoulder. His words made her press her lips together in reaction and her mind swam with worry. "I don't. I don't inspire anyone. I'm not…" She searched for a word and stared beyond him. "Inspirational," she finished lamely as they began to sway.

Her voice fell dead in her throat when their eyes met again. They continued to dance, front and back, back and forth, right and left. Julia felt a ridiculous emotion that was a cross between giddiness and paranoia. What kind of feeling was that?

"Spike," she murmured, though she didn't realize she said his name aloud.

Spike arm tightened around her waist. Leaning his head down, their foreheads touched. "What is this, Julia?" he whispered. "What am I allowed to do? You're Vicious's – you're my best friend's girlfriend," he corrected.

This was absurd, Julia told herself. These odd feelings of ill-content when she was with Vicious and only happiness around Spike. Happiness she'd never been completely shown before. "I don't know what it is," she told him honestly. "But…" Slowly, ever so slowly, her hand slid up the range of his neck, her palm grazing the fine hairs there. She felt him shudder against her.

"Do you think it's wrong?" he queried, his voice so quiet.

_"So hush…hush, little baby…"_

There was no denying it, Julia thought. After only a couple of months, a few handfuls of encounters, the barest of knowledge about him…she was in love with Spike Speigel.

"Julia." Her name on his lips. It was like hearing some ancient symphony…or maybe some kind of warning.

"I think…" She couldn't form the words. His hand fell away from her own and she snaked those now-free fingers into his hair as well, pulling his head down.

Their lips met and clung and Julia soared…but she still couldn't be certain that it wasn't wrong.

"Don't you cry…" 

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Please review!


	6. Ask Myself What It's All For

Hey all, I'm glad you're sticking with this. As always, feedback is appreciated greatly.

Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop, and am making no profit from this fan story.

Note: Lyrics are from Yoko Kanno's "Blue."

-- Kites Without Strings – Part Six: Ask Myself What It's All For

An hour later, Julia set her hand on the handle of the door of her apartment building and turned back to Spike. She stared at him for a moment. His hands were burrowed deeply in the pockets of his suit jacket, and a cigarette was hanging loosely in his mouth. The night wind had given his green fuzz of hair a tousled look, that, she couldn't deny, was too attractive for words. Nervously, she pushed some hair behind her ear. "Well—" she began, and Spike grinned.

"Here's the awkward goodnight," he laughed. "Dare I ask to get a goodnight kiss?"

He'd been joking, well, half-joking anyway, but Julia looked as though he had just backhanded her with his pack of cigarettes. Her face was pale, causing the red lipstick and her sapphire eyes to stand out like a pool of blood beneath twin moons. Though it wasn't cold out, she folded her arms and rubbed them lightly. "Why did we do that at the club?" Julia asked. Her voice was no more than a whisper that seemed to dissolve in the Martian air. "We did we let us?"

"Dunno." Spike's smile dissipated, and he took a long drag, hoping the smoke would clear the taste of her from his mouth. It didn't.

"Spike…" There was a defeated tone in the way a sighed accompanied his name. "You should know we can't do this. I do. We just…" She shook her head. "Can't."

"So, supposing I don't know this and you do, was I the only one in the wrong when you kissed me tonight?" He raised an eyebrow. "It _was_ you, you know."

"I know." Her fingers twisted together, linking and unlinking. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not complaining."

"Spike!" she exclaimed in frustration. "Please, be serious!"

This time, he took the time to stare at her. There was no lamppost on the street within twenty feet of them, and the only light came from inside the apartment building. It spilled out upon her form, causing her hair to glitter in a silhouette that was so beautiful it stifled. His ruby eyes flashed as he dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath his one of his leather shoes.

"I'm very serious. And, seriously, I'm going to ask you this question." He stepped up to her. Reactively, Julia moved back, and he pressed her against the plastic door, but didn't touch her. He could hear her breath come out shakily as his own heart pounded in his ears. "Do you love Vicious?"

Her eyes grew impossibly wider. For a moment, she made wordless sounds, at a loss for anything to say. Then her shoulders slackened and her eyebrows narrowed. "What makes you think you have any right to ask that question?"

"Well." Maybe, by doing this, he would be doing both of them a favor. Ending the chess game he and Julia seemed to be battling in, he could put both of their minds at rest. "Vicious is my friend. I don't want a friend to get hurt by a girl who would kiss another guy while she was dating him."

Her hand darted out and had slapped his left cheek, but he had expected it. He felt a particularly acute sting and was fairly certain she'd scratched him with one of those well-shaped nails of hers, but he quickly forgot about it as he turned his head back to face her again and saw the raw storm raging in her gaze.

"Is that so?" she asked, close to aiming at him a second time. Her hands were balled up at her sides, and she was practically gulping air with the way her chest was heaving. Her shoulders shook with her anger, but Spike didn't let himself do anything to reassure her. "Then tell me, if I'm the girl who would kiss another man, how does it feel to _be _the other man?"

"Feels damn awful." He smirked, certain that his look was cold. "But it was fun while it lasted."

"You filthy _bastard_—mph!" Her tirade was cut off by his mouth against hers, his fingers delving into her hair, pressing her to him at the waist. Every cell in her body warmed instantaneously, and her hands went to his face automatically. She was on the verge of moaning when he yanked himself away from her and took off across the street.

It took Julia approximately four seconds to pull from her haze of sexual tension and push into the cloud of lividness again. "Spike!" she shouted after him. He didn't stop, and a late bus making its last stop at the corner sped in front of her before she could go after him and make any attempts on his life. By the time the vehicle had passed, Spiegel's form had disappeared from her.

She burst into the building, stomped loudly up the steps, and it took three tried before she could get her key into the lock of her apartment. She slammed the door behind her, kicked her heels off rather violently, and in her temper, grabbed what was nearest her – a glass vase of white roses Vicious had given her the day before – and hurtled it against the wall. The shattering sound of glass and the splash of water satisfied her. She stared down at the bruised flowers, some of them impaled with shards. Julia felt just like them; cut and aching.

_That selfish bastard_, she thought, cooler-headed now as she reached under the sink for a brush and a dustpan. Sweeping up the glass, stems, petals, and most of the spilled water, she dumped the whole business in the trash and tossed the tools into the corner. Wanting something to do with her hands, she put on a pot of tea and went into her bedroom to change. She let her clothes fall where they would, remember with not a little bit of shame how she had impulsively chosen something sexy for _him_. How could he _say _those things to her, after being so nice and sweet?

The worst part, she decided as she threw on a long black nightgown of rich satin, was that he was right. The idiot was right. Ever since she had laid eyes on Spike, a part of her had been steadily inching away from Vicious and towards the green-haired syndicate agent. But she could recall how she had so easily been attracted to Vicious; those mysterious, icy eyes that had met hers when she had served him his drink at a bar when he had been conducting a business meeting on the other side of Tharsus. The place had been low-paying, and the customers had been less than decent to her. Her boss had been a man who had demanded payment for giving her a job.

But Vicious…Vicious had been kind to her, which was more than she could say for anyone else that she had interacted with at the time. Before he had left, he had given her a card with his name and a number she could reach him at. The week hadn't even ended before Julia and called him, and he had come for her personally in a sleek black limousine. That had been it for her. She had found a knight that had rescued her from a dragon.

And then she had realized that he had taken her to another dragon, a red one; one whose claws trapped anyone and everyone who messed with it, killing them slowly. She had seen that with Karuma tonight. But, like the golden eyes or the shining scales, some aspects of the dragon were attractive. And though it unfortunate now, Julia could never deny that Spike was one of them. Vicious was as well…but he was more like the fangs, interesting to look at, but you would never want them to touch you. And she had been bitten by him many, many times now.

Perhaps, she thought as she flopped down on the bed, it would be best to just run from the dragon entirely. She wasn't exactly a damsel in distress, and she didn't expect anyone to come out and save her. So she would just have to take care of herself.

Julia closed her eyes, forgetting about her tea. Her lips still tingled from Spike's heart-jerking kiss that had exhausted her. Everything he did exhausted her.

If she _could _save herself, she added mentally as sleep took her.

---

"I'm such an ass." Grumbling to himself, sitting up in bed, Spike flipped through channel after channel with the remote control, pausing now and then to take a drink from the beer on the nightstand next to him. Unlike his effect on her, Julia made him feel energized and alive no matter what passed between them. And since he couldn't sleep, he had opted for a night of television. However, he wasn't seeing a single damned thing on the screen. Every image held Julia's angry face, so disastrously beautiful and tearing him up inside.

It had needed to happen. Spike told himself this over and over again, but the words refused to sink in properly. Hadn't he been thinking from the night he'd first met her that he couldn't get wrapped up in something he could handle? If Vicious found out…which he might even now…he would be in trouble. Julia might even be in trouble. He had seen Vicious angry. The possibilities for temper satisfaction for that man were boundless.

Spike drained the rest of his beer in one gulp. Reaching into the drawer of the same nightstand, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Once there was a steady stream of nicotine going into him, he turned off the TV, and stared up at the ceiling in the blackness. God, he'd really pissed her off, hadn't he?

Damn it. If the woman were going to keep him up all night, he would _prefer _it be in a way different from this. But since this was all he was ever going to get, he'd take it.

He _still _could remember the taste of her. And this was his seventh cig since he'd left Julia. Shit.

---

Vicious was… Even he had trouble describing it. Not nervous; Vicious hadn't felt something as strong as nervousness in years. More likely, he was anxious.

In all the time since he'd joined the Red Dragon Syndicate, there was not a time he had been the sole invitee to Mao Yenrai's private offices. He had always gone there in a group or with a committee. But he had been called early this morning with word that Yenrai had insisted on an immediate audience with the cool syndicate agent.

He couldn't possibly think of what the old man would want. It was always possible that the Elders had asked him to give orders for a new mission, but that seemed unlikely. He had always been summoned directly to the Elders themselves. Could Mao have points to make on a current project? No, the Hauvez-Morlette Drug Exchange had just been cleared up at Gate 51 the night before, Vicious knew. What, then, was the sudden business?

To some, the ones to fear in the Red Dragon Clan were the Elders, with their ruthless hearts and all-seeing eyes. The image of the three old demons behind their screens was enough to intimidate just about anyone. But those that knew the business well knew that the Elders were gentle lambs, with their subtle commanding, in comparison to the field operator, Mao Yenrai.

The Elders were _the _dragons of the Syndicate; but Mao was their obedient tiger, whose loyalty surpassed any of emotion in his soul. Though he was familiar with patience and wisdom, Mao was the best when it came to cold handlings. The banquet in honor of Karuma's execution the night before was direct proof of that.

He walked into the first office building, giving no care to the tiled floors and lavish tapestries that had been there for thirty or forty years now. He took no notice of other agents and staff members he passed as he walked into the elevator. He did not even see the short, shaggy-haired man that shared an elevator with him until he got off on floor seven, leaving Vicious to ride to the eleventh floor by himself.

Mao had a suite here; he also owned an apartment on the West end of Tharsus, but he rarely left his work for enough hours at a time to truly enjoy it. There were fresh flowers everywhere, imported most likely from Europa. Mao enjoyed things of beauty. That he and Vicious held common between them, but Vicious had accepted long ago that he didn't deserve them. Looking around, the katana-wielder surveyed the room with chilled eyes. His gaze fell on Mao sitting in an armchair that faced a high coffee table. There, here was pouring two glasses of tea.

"You're very prompt," the older man said, his smile creating deep lines in his cheeks and forehead. "Thank you."

"I make it a point to fulfill requests," Vicious replied smoothly, "and I was asked this morning to be here at nine o' ten."

"Yes, you were. Tea?" Mao sipped from his own cup, releasing the slightest breath of contentment when he lowered the beverage again. "I imagine you would prefer me to get right to the point."

Vicious didn't respond but looked straight, out of the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the glorious Martian city.

"Please sit, Vicious," said Mao, setting his cup down on the table. "What I am going to tell you is by no means a simple topic." When the tall agent was seated in the armchair across from his on the other side of the coffee table, he folded his hands and placed them in his lap in a very business-like fashion. "What do you know about current events?"

Vicious did not leap into speech. The way he replied was quick, and more like sliding into words like a hover car slides into mid-morning traffic. "I know that the Clan is intended to intercept a dealing with the ISSP and a Pluto export company—"

"I'm referring to current events concerning the Solar System," Mao cut in. "What can you tell me that is important and could effect everyone of the sun."

Confused, but not willing to showing it under any circumstances, Vicious took his tea and drank half of it in one gulp. _This is what you get for being work-absorbed_, he scolded himself. It hit him when he returned the cup to the table. "The war sprouting on Titan."

Mao's face was grave. "Rebels from all over, but mostly from Earth, are daring to retaliate against the government's oppression. They're strong. Should they defeat the Titan regime, Vicious, their next conquest will be Mars – strictly, Tharsus. Of this there is no doubt. Should they come for Tharsus, the Syndicate shall not come out unbroken, even if every mafia united as one." He stood so that he could look down at the pale man. "You must go there. You must go and fight for us there."

Vicious didn't know what it was he was feeling. If the icy trickling that seemed to wet his spine was fear, he found it more annoying than any other emotion. He wanted it gone. To distract himself, he asked a question. "What do the Elders wish I do there, sir?"

"We will be sending a team of one hundred men to Titan. Though they will be following the orders of whatever captain volunteers from Mars are put under, you must lead them. Dragons can listen to anything, but that does not mean they hear it." Mao held out his hand. "Everyone in this organization has faith in you, Vicious. You have the spirit of warrior."

Vicious rose to his full height, a vast number of inches more than Yenrai's, and shook the leader's hand. There was no decision for him to make. The answer had been given by the ones "asking" him to go to battle.

"You have concerns, of course," said Mao. "I can assure you anything you wish to be taken care of shall be."

"Respectfully," Vicous said in his gravelly voice, "I know the Clan is of all competence. In my mind, I know that I will be safe. But I feel as though—"

"Do you honestly believe that the Red Dragons would be short-sighted enough to allow the death of such a valued member of the Syndicate?"

"No, sir."

"Well, then," smiled Mao, creasing once again those deep lines in his face, "do not look so worried. Why don't you go spend some time with those you care about?" As Vicious turned, he added, "You must make sure you really care about them, Vicious. When you're sleeping on that sand, you'll find that they are the only ones you'll want to think about."

---

It was evening with Julia finished cleaning her entire apartment. She didn't know why she kept at it. She scrubbed the place weekly, whether it needed it or not. This behavior would be called obsessive by some, but Julia preferred to see it as organized. Humans often forgot with the new technology that practically lived their lives for them that humility was still a necessary part of a person's character. She liked to be certain that she could keep just a little of that humility inside of her.

She was just tossing her disposable plastic gloves into the waste bin when she heard a key in her lock. Her shoulders instantly tensed as Vicious stepped through the door. Sometimes she regretted having given him the extra key to her apartment, but she always gave him a smile when he just strutted in – like now.

Well, she smiled anyway. But Vicious wasn't strutting. He seemed to almost be limping with a lack of attitude, and Julia opened her mouth to inquire what was wrong with him. He was usually so restless. But before she could utter a syllable, the cool-fleshed man had covered her lips with his, drinking the words like wanted poison.

Even his kiss was lackluster. It was normal for it to be fierce and energetic, inviting her to let him in, to allow him to take that molding of lips wherever he would. Julia brushed her fingers over his shoulders, ready to open her arms to him, but Vicious suddenly pulled back and stepped away from her.

They stared at each other for a moment. Julia wasn't positive, but she could have sworn there was something akin to helplessness in his eyes. Her heart pounded, but not in the way it would have two months ago. "Vicious?"

"I need to call Spike," he told her abruptly. "I need him to come over here. You both need to know what I'll be doing soon."

Spike? No, not Spike! "Are—are you sure?" she asked quietly. "Do you want to talk about it first?"

"I'll talk about it," he growled out, "when Spike's here." He stalked over to her telephone, nearly ripping it from the while in his hurry.

As he dialed, Julia clenched a fist at her side. Though her head ached with worry, her blood was hot with nervousness. She didn't want to see Spike again. Not yet. Not after what he'd said about her, said about _them_…

If Vicious saw them together this time, would he so easily miss the chemicals churning between her and Spike?

Julia could only pray he would.

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Review please!


	7. Confusion Seeps Inside Me

Welcome to chapter 7. This is the big "Oooh, Vicious is gone, let's see some action" chapter. You guys are such awesome reviewers, I wanted to let you know. Special thanks to Zippy, who put my portrayal of Vicious in better perspective for me. Hopefully, Zippy, with this chapter you'll have more belief in how I'm trying to explain things. Thanks!

Disclaimer: I do not claim to own Cowboy Bebop; its storyline, characters, or setting. I am making no profit from this fanwork.

Note: Chapter title is from "Call Me, Call Me" by Yoko Kanno.

-- Kites Without Strings -- Part Seven: Confusion Seeps Inside Me

By Gundam Girl

Ten minutes after Vicious hung up the phone, Spike burst into Julia's apartment. "What?" he demanded. "What's wrong? What is it?" When he saw Julia sitting calmly with Vicious at the table, a cup of green tea steaming between her hands, his posture relaxed considerably.

"You certainly look panicked," Vicious commented, sipping his own tea. His icy eyes watched his friend from over the rim of the cup.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Spike cursed, angrily slamming the door behind him and plopping down in a vacant chair. "From your message, I thought something had happened. Like Julia got kidnapped or something."

"What?" Julia asked. "Why?"

"Mr. Descriptive here calls me up and says, 'You need to come to Julia's. Now.' I'm thinking there was some serious shit going down." Spike leaned toward the table, his forehead dropping into his palm. "Get a freakin' vocabulary, won't you, Vicious?"

After Julia had poured and handed a third cup of tea to Spike and he had downed half of it in one gulp, Vicious set his palms flat against the surface of the table. "I do have something important to tell you. Both of you," he said, turning his eyes to Julia and keeping them there. "I had a meeting with Mao Yenrai today."

Spike tensed, but Julia just emanated confusion. "Is that a big deal?" she asked. "Don't you meet with him almost every day?"

"It was private," said Vicious, "in his very apartment. He asked me if I knew anything about current events." He took a breath, though his exterior remained cool. "He will be sending me to Titan with a squad of Dragons. We are going to fight in the war."

There was a long pause filled with silence. Vicious watched as his girlfriend and his best friend stared at him with identical expressions of shock and probably denial.

Spike was the first to say anything. "You?" His ruby eyes blinked once, twice, and he shook his green-haired head in disbelief. "Why you? What good can you do?"

Vicious gave a small snort, not of amusement, but of slight offense. "Well, we'll see, won't we?" He reached for his tea again, but a pale hand landed on his own before he could grab his cup. His gaze followed the arm up until he found Julia's face, full of anguish.

"But if you…" She swallowed. "If you go, you could die. Vicious…you could die!" she exclaimed.

If Vicious had been a normal man, he might have been moved by such concern. As it was, he was not a normal man and responded very stonily to Julia's shaking voice. "Yes." He slowly pried her fingers away from his arm. "I could."

Julia watched, amazed and somewhat disgusted, as Vicious merely drank more of his tea. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream at him for not being the man she wanted to love. The man she wanted to love would be frightened at the prospect of going to war, of leaving her. The man she wanted to love was sitting next to her, just as worried and fearful as herself. "And…is that all you can say?"

Vicious lowered his cup again, meeting her eyes with firm resolve inscribed in his expression. "It's all I'm _going_ to say."

Julia leaned back in her chair, away from him, and, inevitably, closer to Spike. She nearly jumped when Spike's hand landed gently on her shoulder.

"Are you really going to be cold toward this situation?" asked Spike, apparently just as incredulous as the golden-haired woman he was attempting to indirectly comfort at the moment. "Aren't you going to protest or suggest someone else?"

Vicious lip curled into the slightest of snarls. "What's that about?" he demanded. "Is that cowardice that you're expecting from me, Spike? In all the time you've known me, do you suspect that I'm just going to shirk the responsibilities given to me by the syndicate? To deny the honor that they think I will be useful in such a monumental event in the universe today?"

"Oh, so it's honorable that they want you to die?!" exclaimed Spike, shooting from his chair and slamming his hands down onto the table. The teapot and cups rattled in the quake. "It's honorable that they don't give a damn whether you come back or not?"

Vicious shook his head. "Whatever you don't expect of me, Spike, I can say that I didn't expect you to understand what this means to me. The syndicate is life for me. I thought it was the same for you."

"It is," Spike told him coolly. "But damn it, I kind of _need _my life to work in the syndicate, don't I?"

Vicious only sighed. "I didn't think you'd be this upset."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, with me gone, you'll have to lead the section. I'm not about to put authority into Lin and Shin's hands." Vicious smirked a little. "That means power for you."

"Why the hell," Spike asked contemptuously, "do I want power?"

"Because that's what life is," the light-haired syndicate leader said. His eyes held a faint, not happy but not unhappy, glow that neither Spike nor Julia could interpret. "And you want to live your life, don't you?"

"If that's life, then I guess…" Spike threw he head back, letting out a small smile of his own. "I guess I'd rather live a dream." He grabbed his cup and flung the rest of his tea down his throat. "Julia." He turned to see the woman's pale face staring down at the table; it seemed she'd been shocked by the horrible argument between her lover and Spike. "You okay?"

Julia forced herself from her dazed state. "Yeah," she replied, shutting her eyes for a second. "Yes, I'm…" She met Spike's eyes, and her heart twisted. "I'll be fine."

Spike nodded. "Thanks for the tea." He turned to Vicious. "When are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow morning. The nine o' clock shuttle." Vicious' eyebrows lowered.

Spiegel shrugged. "Maybe I'll make it to see you off." He pulled the collar of his trench up; it was raining outside.

"Spike," Vicious called, efficiently making his friend pause. "What happened to your face?"

The other man lifted his fingers to the thin, fairly long scratch at his left cheekbone. He recalled the slap Julia had given him the night before. "I irritated a woman," he said. "Bye." Not letting himself look back, Spike forcibly turned the knob of the door and half-stomped out of the apartment. But he shut the door gently.

Vicious and Julia listened to his angry steps echo down the stairs. Julia stood up suddenly, gathering cups and the teapot. She carried them to the sink and practically flung them down, her first sign of being upset.

Her eyes caught movement outside the rain-spattered window above the sink. Spike's brown-coat-wearing figure moved along the sidewalk, hands shoved deep in his pockets with his head down. He looked pissed off and more, he looked helpless.

Julia wasn't surprised when she felt large hands slip around her waist. The fingers curled into the cotton of her sweater, and she felt Vicious' hot breath against her neck as he said, "He'll be annoyed for awhile. You probably know that by now."

Julia nodded. "He's too good of a friend sometimes." Vicious made a sound of agreement. She waited a beat, then asked in a whisper, "You don't really want to go, do you?"

His grip on her tightened for a moment, then relaxed. One of his hands rose up to lightly fondle her right breast, suggesting without words. "Do you," he whispered, "really _not_ want me to go?"

She turned her head to face him. "Vicious—" Julia was instantly cut off by his kiss; a rough, heartless friction of sensitive flesh against even more sensitive flesh. His hand pressed against her harder, and she stumbled back, trapped between him and the kitchen counter. When he finally pulled away, she gasped for breath, opening her eyes to look at him.

Vicious' face was tense, his eyes wild with unsatisfied lust. It would be, she thought, up to her to slake it. It was probably the least she could do. This she figured as she rose on her toes to meet him for another kiss as she hastily pulled apart the buttons of his shirt. Most likely, it would be their last time together.

She was just thankful that he had missed the connection between her and Spike after all.

---

Moonlight slanted into Julia's bedroom, thanks to the one curtain that was pulled back away from the window. Occasionally, a car went by, its headlights trailing a streak of white across the walls, over the head of the woman sleeping on her stomach beside him.

Vicious sat up, feeling just a bit restless. He figured he should be getting some sleep, with his departure for Titan approaching in – he glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand next to him – seven hours. But something nagged at him, forcing him awake and zinging his brain like electricity.

Maybe he wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't been drinking tea at that moment, peering over the rim of the teacup. Or maybe he wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't already been riled up. But he had definitely felt an intense suspicion when Spike had asked if Julia had been okay. And his mind, now, was racing as he remembered the almost protective way Spike had set his hand on Julia. And how Julia hadn't reacted poorly to it.

_Stop it. _He reached over to the nightstand and turned on the small lamp, satisfied when Julia remained asleep. He opened the drawer, reached for the small bottle of brandy he kept there. His fingers ended their journey mere centimeters away from the bottle, and he pulled them back, opting to dig his fingers in the sheet pulled up to his bare waist instead. His chin fell to his chest.

It was strange and unsettling that he could feel this way about a single, hardly important woman, so fierce, so…possessive. Did it matter, though? He was going to war today. Probably he'd never see her again, never feel her again. She'd stay here with…

Vicious' eyes glinted in the dual light of the lamp and the moon. There was a dangerous quality to him, and if someone saw him now, they would probably have backed away in fear. He felt brutal. He felt like he could tear something apart with his hands.

He looked at Julia. A small sound of lividness scraped out from his throat. He ordered himself to keep his temper in check. He could be wrong, couldn't he? She might only think of Spike a friend, a brother even. She could be distraught that he was going to Titan instead of anticipating it.

He flicked the light off and lay back down. Beside him, she stirred. He shut his eyes, preparing to feign sleep if she woke up.

She rolled over. Vicious thought she might have opened her eyes and seen him. But then, Julia just rolled back to her previous position, and her breathing deepened again.

She _wouldn't_ miss him, he thought. Not a damn bit.

---

The next morning at eight-fifty, the shuttleport was jam packed with hundreds of Mars citizens, all wishing to see off and bid farewell to their relatives or friends that were leaving for Titan, whether on orders or out of volunteering. Julia had been waiting there with Vicious for thirty minutes and had yet to catch sight of Spike.

Would he really be so angry, she wondered, that he wouldn't come to see his friend before he left and maybe never came back? Julia checked her watch again. Eight-fifty-four. _Pull through on this one, Spike_, she thought. He may have been a prick, but he was a prick that Vicious needed right now.

She saw him then. He came out between two Russians making out shamelessly. They cursed at the grinning man in their native language. She saw Spike roll his eyes. When he was near them, his smile sobered and he aimed it at Vicious.

"Would it be okay for me to still hope we're friends?"

Vicious smiled; Spike and Julia were too relieved to see him do so that they didn't notice how firm his mouth was. "Of course," he replied. "And is it safe for me to assume you'll take care of things for me while I'm away?"

"Just come back soon," Spike ordered. "I don't like the responsibility."

Julia could have laughed. They were so opposite each other; Vicious cold and calm, Spike dynamic and energetic. Both were, in their own ways, smooth.

Smooth. Suddenly remembering, she delved into her deep coat pocket. "Vicious, here!" she said enthusiastically. "Oh, God, I'd have killed myself if I forgot to give it to you."

Vicious looked down. In Julia's outstretched hand lay a small lacquered black box. There was a tiny silver handle, and on the lid, a miniature red dragon curled itself around its long tail.

"Well, don't just stare at it," Spike said. "Play the thing."

Slowly, Vicious turned the tiny handle a few times. Notes tinkered out in sounds of little bells, playing a lustrous melody. When Julia had first heard the song, she had thought of the word "smooth."

"Jazz," noted Spike. "Classy choice, there, Julia."

"It's melancholy," Vicious commented. He looked up at the woman smiling at him, realizing that if he ever did play it, endless images of her would appear in his mind. Whether they were of Julia with him…or Spike.

Julia shrugged. "I suppose it is. I got it because of the dragon, really, but if you know of something else you'd like, maybe I can send it to…" She saw Vicious' look and stopped speaking. "Of course," she smiled. "You never tell me what gifts you'd like to have."

Vicious curled his hand around the music box, clutching it for a moment. Then he dipped it into his own pocket. "Thank you."

Julia waved it away. "It was nothing. Something to remember me better on cold nights." She stepped forward, trying to stay as casual as possible with her heart cantering in her chest. "Goodbye, Vicious."

He leaned down and kissed her, kissed her like he wanted to drain the life from her and force it into his own body. Maybe he did. "I'll be back," he whispered to her.

Julia's chest tightened; not out of hope, but of small fear. "I…believe you," she managed.

Vicious turned from her and held his hand out toward his friend. "Spike?"

"Don't get shot." It was good enough advice, Spike thought as he shook the other man's hand. "Seriously. Take care."

"You too." He turned, ready to board the shuttle that would take him to the sandy planet where death waited for thousands of men. "One more favor," he said then to Spike. "This is of the utmost importance." A test.

"Okay," Spike said. His tone was wary, but undetectably so.

Vicious' eyes sharpened. "Take care of Julia for me."

Both of them reacted marginally; Julia looked at the ground, and Spike inhaled sharply through his nose, but he recovered well. "Didn't you say to take care of things?" he said. "I would assume your…Julia would be included." He hadn't been able, Spike thought with some guilt, to say "your girlfriend."

"All right then." He walked away satisfied. He didn't need to look back to know that both Spike and Julia were staring at him with horrified expressions. Vicious knew everything he needed to.

And in his time away from them, he would be able to figure out exactly how he wanted to proceed when he returned home to Mars. And he _would _return to Mars.

He would survive easily knowing that there was a mission to accomplish once the war ended.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Review please!


	8. My Love For You

Oh my gosh…can it be? The Big Chapter, as a friend of mine calls it. It's the definite major turning point in the fic, and although I still don't know how long it's going to be, this does mean the foreshadowing of the end. Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop.

Note: The chapter title is from "Adieu" by Yoko Kanno.

The Bride of Note: This is a revised version of this chapter. For those of you who caught the first posting, it isn't really necessary to read it again, since I just fixed some errors and added in a bit more description, but if you feel like a re-read, go for it!

-- Kites Without Strings -- Part Eight: My Love For You

By Gundam Girl

The two people closest to Vicious left the spaceport together. It would have been ridiculous not to, and, to a certain extent, childish. Running away didn't suit either of them. Running away from each other…that was ridiculous, too.

Spike was the first to say anything, just as they were coming out of the port. "So." Not Goethe, but hey. A guy does what he can.

"So." Julia obviously couldn't do any better. She turned back to look at the glass doors. "He's gone off to war." A small smile came to her lips. "I must be the girl back home."

"Nah. You're not the type." Fishing around in his trench coat for a lighter and a cigarette, Spike admitted he just didn't want her to be the type. Retrieving the much-desired objects, he lit up and nearly sighed as the nicotine entered his system. Damn, if Vicious didn't make him nervous lately.

Julia's eyes sharpened at his words. "But I'm the type who'd kiss another guy while she was dating someone, right?"

_Fuck._ He nearly burned his finger on the end of his cigarette. He fumbled for words as the lighter dropped to the street. "God. Julia." She wasn't furious anymore, he realized as her eyes fell to where his tool had landed. She was just hurt now. "I'm sorry for that night. I really, really am." He wished he wasn't, but there wasn't much more he could do about it than he could do about Earth being a wasteland. "I just thought…" What had he been thinking again? Her hard, blue stare made it difficult to remember. It came to him like a light turning on. "I thought we needed to…to end…it."

"End what, Spike?" Annoyance coated her voice like bad-tasting medicine. He liked her laughter better. "End dancing and jazz songs and accidental kisses?"

"Accidental." He rocked back on his heels, contemplating the word. "Is that what they were?"

"It's what they _had _to be. What are you doing?" she demanded while he held out a hand and a taxi slid up in front of them.

"Taking you home," he replied, opening the door and pulling her into the car with him.

"I don't _want _to go home," she protested as he reached for her hands. What she wanted to do was take a walk and think, while the air was cool enough to clear her brain. It looked like it might rain soon.

"Tough," he retorted, dragging her into the taxi. Reaching over, he closed them in, and then grabbed her by her shoulders and hauled her against him. His lips fell to hers like rain to pavement, hard and soft at the same time. She struggled for a few moments, fighting off his kiss, fighting off him…until she couldn't fight anything and simply slackened against him.

Spike pulled back only to give instructions to the driver for Julia's apartment building. Then his eyes turned back to hers, ruby to sapphire. "We need to talk."

His firm voice left no room for argument. But they took their space. Spike tried to keep up with his already half-burned cigarette. Julia couldn't quite get herself to stop trembling.

---

Fifteen minutes later, they were on the landing of the apartment. Julia wished her fingers would settle as she slid the key into the lock and opened her door. Spike followed her in and half-slammed it behind him. Her heart tripped when she heard the definite click as he locked them inside.

"Well?" Spike said.

Julia only arched a brow at him. "Weren't you the one who insisted we talk?" She sat in a kitchen chair, worried her legs would give out. His eyes were just the slightest bit intimidating. She was afraid he would say something she didn't want to hear – or worse, something she did.

He raised his hands and raked all ten fingers through his hair. "He's gone now."

"We've established that," she said briefly. "Are you hoping to cash in now?"

"Goddamn it, Julia! I'm not hoping for a thing!" Frustrated more than he could remember ever being, mostly because he could _help _but hope, he huffed out a breath. "I didn't want to hurt you the other night. I thought I was doing something right."

"You've got a real fucked-up sense of judgment, don't you, Spiegel?" She almost, _almost _wanted to slap him again and refresh the nearly faded scratch marks on his face. "There're so many other women to toy with. Why me?"

"It isn't like I want you on purpose." After saying so and realizing how dumb that sounded, he almost slapped _himself_.

She was a little confused but hid it well. "So then you do think those kisses were accidental after all?"

"Honey, you are really a mind-bender, do you know that?" Spike sank in another of the chairs. He felt like he was spending a lot of time in this room lately. "The thing is," he continued more calmly, "is that I don't just want you because you're there. I think I—"

"Oh, Spike, I don't _want _to know!" she cried, backing the chair out and moving to her feet. "I _can't_ know! I can't!" She half-stumbled from the weight of her own emotions being thrust onto her.

He refrained from going after her just yet, ordering himself to stay in his seat, but followed her with his eyes as she went to the sink and turned away from him. She stared out the window. There were tears in her voice, and Spike ached madly from hearing them. "Please," she whispered to him, "don't tell me. Don't let me know. I was happy only a few weeks ago, Spike. I was happy with Vicious."

That statement made him cold. His fists bunched on top of her table. "I'm sorry I'm the person that changed that."

"Not just you." Her right hand rested lightly on her left forearm over the sleeve of the purple cotton sweater she wore. "A lot of things," she murmured in her scarlet-rose-petals-to-cold-cement voice.

Now he did stand up. The strange difference in her tone had him wary, like a cat with its spine arched. "What things?"

He saw her tense as she felt him draw near, and she whipped around. "Don't."

He paused when he was standing less than a foot in front of her, towering over her while she looked up at him with a defiant expression. But behind the determination in her eyes was deep and troubling sadness.

Spike softened his own voice. "What is it? What's wrong?"

She shook her head, tears just beginning to shimmer. "Spike…"

"What did I do wrong?"

That, and the genuine concern in his voice, broke her. She folded her arms across her stomach and leaned back against the sink, sobbing with her eyes squeezed shut, fighting to breathe through the pain. It didn't take long, though, for Spike's arms to come around her, to hold all of her, her torture included, and to take it to himself.

"Julia," he murmured into her hair. The sound of her crying ripped at his heart like well-sharpened claws. "Tell me. Tell me why you're…"

She clung to him like a person drowning clings to rock in the middle of the river. Like she was dying and he was the only thing that could ever save her.

Maybe he was.

"I'm so scared," she breathed out shakily, her tears wetting the front of his shirt. "So scared, Spike. I'm—"

"Shhh." He rubbed her back in soothing circles, his fingers twining in and out of her long, lustrous hair. "Scared," he echoed softly. "Why? What is it you're scared of?" He was sure he'd never spoken so gently to anyone before. He felt like he was holding something delicate and glass and that if he dropped it, she would surely shatter. She looked up and he could see himself in her eyes. His hands slid over her shoulders and down her arms, seeking her own.

She cried out when his fingers glided over her left forearm. Alarmed, he jerked his hands away, but when she calmed, he slowly closed his fingers over her wrist and grasped at the edge of her sleeve.

"Spike, please," she whispered, tugging slightly, knowing it was futile. He held on, and he slowly brought the sleeve up to her elbow. His eye narrowed dangerously when he saw the bruise, large and graying over her soft, pale skin. His eyes darted up to hers, and she gasped slightly.

His tone was short and clipped. "It was him."

Her face went to the side, staring at the vase of flowers on the table. He brought his free hand up and gripped her chin, turning her eyes back to him. "Julia."

Julia's face crumbled again, but this time she didn't cry and just looked at him with near-agony. "Spike, please don't think on it too much."

"Don't think on it? Julia, Vicious has fucking hurt you!" He pointed at the bruise. "Look at this!"

"I do!" she shouted at him. "I do look at it! Every morning I check to see which parts of my body I have to hide today!" She pulled away from him, stepped back. "What am I supposed to do, Spike? Write a complaint form to the syndicate and ask that they get their captain a counselor so he stops being so tough when he fucks his girlfriend?" She let out a cold laugh that held no humor. "You guys might not let me in an actual battle, but I get my fair share of injuries."

Spike was stunned into silence. Gray light from the overcast sky fell over them, as dreary as her words. "Julia… I didn't know…"

_"That's why I'm doubting, Spike. I treat her the best I possibly can."_

"That bastard," Spike muttered to himself rather than to her.

"I guess so," she whispered in response. When their eyes met again, she felt desperate. "Spike, you can't tell him that I told you about this. He'll—"

Before she could even think about finishing her sentence, he was there, pressing her to him with more emotion than she had ever felt from anyone before. Vicious held her tightly, always, but it was always to possess, to control. What she felt coming from Spike was a need to ease and to comfort.

Her heart constricted. "Oh…please. Don't do this," she murmured, her hands involuntarily curling into the back of his shirt. "Please don't, Spike."

So many _don't's. _Spike's hand gripped her hand, so gently, and lightly pulled her head away from his shoulder so he could look at her. "Don't what?"

Her grip tightened, and her eyes were wide as they looked into his. Her voice was soft. "Don't make me fall in love with you."

He felt like he might burst. Spike Speigel had never fallen in love before; not unless you counted a young woman named Alicia Verera, but that had been in seventh grade. But it took no elevated use of brainpower to ascertain that was what he felt for Julia.

Love, fierce, deep love that kindled down deep inside him like a fire lit and spreading quickly. And protectiveness.

Protectiveness from Vicious. From his best friend.

The thought startled him. "Julia." Her eyes were like twin knives stabbing his heart, he thought, the pain in them the blunt edge. Suddenly, he didn't give a damn about Vicious. If the war on Titan didn't kill him, then Spike would as soon as the asshole got back. But for now…

His lips came down hard on hers, and without control, he pulled the hem of her sweater out of her black pants. Julia returned the gesture eagerly by shoving his coat from his shoulders, leaving it to fall in a mass of heavy material on the floor. Their kiss lasted as long as it could, until they had fumbled their way into her bedroom and were tugging at each other's shirts.

Soon, both were completely divested of any clothing. They fell back onto her low bed, and, realizing not a moment too soon just how they were going about this, Spike worked to gentle his grip on her, to slow his kisses and his hands.

Her eyes were questioning as he rose above her.

"I'm not going to do whatever it is he does to you," he told her firmly. His fingers drifted over the nape of her neck. Heat spike through both of them, but he forced the desire to soften. "I'm going to do better."

He fell to her side on the mattress and pulled her close to him. "I'm going to love you, Julia." When he kissed her again, he tasted her tears.

And Julia believed him.

---

Vicious walked from the shuttle onto the unfamiliar ground of Titan. His eyes calculated the area; blue sky, dry air, sand the hell everywhere. There was a mighty mass of men crowding the surrounding meters, conversing, some of them joking, some of them just telling each other how pissed off they were to be here.

He still wasn't sure how he felt about being here himself. Not that it mattered. But for all he knew, there could be a bust going on right now, and instead of taking out drug lords, he was going to be trained to kill some stupid rebels on an equally stupid spit of land.

He made his mind settle. He was an appreciated member of the Red Dragon Syndicate, after all, not a little whining fourteen year-old whose girlfriend had just dumped him for the school basketball star.

Oh no, his girlfriend had gone for his best friend instead.

"Shit-hole, isn't it?"

Vicious turned and gave a quick study of the man that had spoken to him. Tall, fair skin, long hair the color of violets, eyes that looked fresh and had probably seen a lot more than the average observer could possibly tell. But Vicious wasn't average.

"That's what you looked like you were thinking," the man went on in his friendly voice. "It's probably what half the guys here are thinking."

Vicious stopped looking at him, uninterested. "What are you thinking?" he asked in his own dreary tones. The guy probably saw the desert wasteland as a world for delicious possibilities and adventure. Hippie.

"Me? It's really a shit-hole. But I don't care." He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Got nothin' better to do anyway."

It was either a brave or stupid man who signed up for a war for the hell of it. Vicious wasn't entirely sure which one this guy was yet. "You came because you're bored?"

His eyes seemed to lose a bit of their gleam. "I came 'cause I needed to get away."

_From where? _Vicious didn't ask. He didn't care enough to; that was what he told himself.

"I'm a saxophone player," he went on, looking at his untied bootlace. He was probably considering tying it, but said instead, "What do you do?"

"Kill people," said Vicious promptly.

"Oh, really?" He shrugged again. Being so tall, he looked strange doing so. "That's not original."

That statement annoyed the syndicate captain a little. "Did you say your name?" Vicious asked in a harsh tone. With luck, this airhead would leave him alone soon if they made the proper introductions.

"God, no, I didn't. Sorry. Manners aren't really my strong point," the purple-headed man apologized. "I'm Gren. Actually, my name's really long and dumb-sounding, so I won't get into it. You?"

"Vicious." He turned his silver eyes to Gren. "Maybe you should remember it, in case I have to kill you."

Undaunted, Gren only extended a hand. "Maybe I will."

Mechanically, Vicious shook and turned away, walking toward a sign-in post. Strange, saxophone-playing, moron. He got the feeling he'd just made his first acquaintance of war.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Review please!


	9. Fools On Parade

Whoot, chapter nine be here. This one gave me some trouble (I say this a lot, though). I wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to follow up on the events of chapter eight, so I'd really appreciate feedback. I'm going for something that would seem like the real story of Spike's past in Bebop world, so please let me know how it's going.

Note: Chapter title is taken from Yoko Kanno's "Words That We Couldn't Say."

Disclaimer: I don't claim to own any of the Cowboy Bebop characters and am making no profit from this story.

Kites Without Strings -- Part Nine: Fools On Parade

By Gundam Girl

Spike's eyes were glazed as he watched the rain outside. The water droplets fell and merged, becoming one – just as they had. One after another, they hit and swirled, some slowly, some fast as lightning. If he touched the glass, he knew it would be cold, and that he'd recoil from it.

Just like he'd known that if he touched Julia, she would be warm, and he would be unable to pull away.

He turned on his side to stare into her face. The rain made him think of how she had cried. She had sobbed out his name and had fallen almost instantly asleep after they had…

Spike wasn't sure what he wanted to call it. It wasn't simple sex. He'd had a lot of that, and in no way had it been so basic. He supposed he could say they'd made love, but the love had already been there, created at least in the kitchen, but most likely sooner.

He did love her. And to him, it was strange to that way, probably dangerous.

Julia shifted, rolling onto her back and causing the sheet wrapped around them to slip low on her breasts.

Correction, Spike thought. _Definitely _dangerous.

Her eyelashes fluttered, then rose to reveal the blue that had startled him when they'd first met. As it had then, his pulse leapt and he wanted her all the more.

Her lips curved slightly. "Hi." Her voice was low and a bit husky from sleep.

He felt his blood warm and moved in to press his lips to her neck. "Hi."

Julia breathed deeply, and she wanted nothing else than to repeat their earlier activity. But when he reached for her, she pushed lightly against his chest to pause him.

When they met gazes, Spikes heart constricted to find her eyes wet once again with tears.

"I've destroyed you," she whispered.

He didn't move – at least for five seconds. Keeping his weight on his hands, he leaned over and kissed her slowly, drawing her in.

"I don't think so," he replied, his own voice deep. "I've never felt this alive. I feel like…I'm dreaming."

Though his kiss had momentarily hypnotized her, logic was slowly seeping its way back in. It was a sad man, she contemplated mournfully, that felt more lifelike in his dreams than he did when he was conscious. "That's because you _are_ dreaming, Spike. You're thinking we can stay this way forever." Her tone was soft with pain. "There's no reality to that."

Though she seemed to grow more and more anxious, he remained unceasingly calm. "Then if there's no reality…" He caught the smooth skin between her collarbones with his lips, careful to avoid a patch of bruised skin. "Don't wake me up."

"Spike." She couldn't help stroking her fingers over his back, feeling the ridges of his spine and the scars here and there that were like a subtle brand of the syndicate: forever active and binding him.

"I know you're worried," he breathed against her neck. Christ, he was too. He rose over her until he could bury his face in her right shoulder. "For now, at least…can it be enough that I love you?"

Just like any man, Julia thought. As long as things were going their way, there was nothing to be concerned about. Whenever they loved, nothing could go wrong.

She wanted so badly to believe that he was right, but a pair of icy eyes kept flashing at her from the pit of her mind, the glare they sent intense and frightening. Yet she would let him keep his hope as long as he could. She turned her head to breathe into his ear.

"You're enough for me." She meant the words more than he would ever know.

She stared, dazed like he had been, at the ceiling beyond his head, her eyes mere glints of pain as her fingers buried themselves in his thick hair. He held her tighter.

Gren didn't remain an acquaintance, as Vicious soon learned. Although far from being a friend – Vicious wasn't certain if he had one of those any more – they were assigned to each other as specific war comrades, so if nothing else, they were partners. He was dependable, and after a few days, Vicious managed to trust him enough to not get shot in the back.

But that didn't mean he didn't always have his gun handy, just in case he'd underestimated the saxophonist.

Gren's nature seemed far too gentle for war. He often spoke of life on Venus, where he had been born. The heat had made him unnaturally tall in a family where no one was over five-six, and he'd been resented for it. An unreasonable thing to hate someone for, as Gren had mentioned with the most casual of airs, but it had been enough to make Gren go to war.

Vicious didn't buy it. If people didn't like someone, they went somewhere else, but not a place that would likely see them killed. There was something else there. If Vicious had been kinder, he may have actually cared about what it was.

As it was, he wasn't, and so he didn't. What he cared about were the days that went by. Each new dawning on Titan left a fresh wound in Vicious' black soul – wounds of impatience, however, not loss.

Spike had betrayed him. Julia had betrayed him. By now, surely, that had to have furthered that abuse of trust in ways Vicious could only imagine. The idea…

Spike's hands on her… Touching her, caressing her… And Julia wanting it, loving it, loving _him_…they way she had never loved Vicious.

Most men went crazy. Most men went depressed. Vicious did neither; he remained calm, calculating, and plotted for how he would react upon his return to Tharsus.

Plotting was increasingly difficult when you were paired with a guy who had a far too lively time talking.

"Did you _see _those sissies, Vicious, how they kept falling into the mud like that? I swear, I think I had a harder time doing high school phys ed." Gren cut zealously into his steak at dinner. "And they were volunteers, like us. Hard to believe…"

_That you're still alive_. Vicious was fairly certain that he'd have killed the man nights ago and made it look like he'd simply fallen on the barbed wire fences outside the base if it had been someone else. But for someone reason, he felt strangely non-hostile toward the purple-haired man.

Probably because he'd be killing enough people soon anyway.

Spike stayed with Julia throughout the night, though rather than keeping her awake with his own desires, they slept. He got the feeling that Julia hadn't gotten very many full-night's sleeps since she had started seeing Vicious. She slept so motionlessly, almost as if she were dead.

His stomach clenched; admittedly, several times throughout the night he had been so startled by her absolute lack of movement that he had sprung up several times to see if her shoulders were still rising and falling with each breath.

He'd noticed too, how completely at ease she was when she slept. In her waking hours, there had so often been some kind of tension to her, even when she laughed. It was as though she thought that someone would catch her feeling happy and punish her for it. But in sleep, her face was totally relaxed, her limbs loose. She was nearly…_very_…angelic.

Spike took a deep breath and thrust his hands into the pockets of his trench coat, retrieved along with the rest of his clothes from all over Julia's apartment between the bedroom and the kitchen. She was most likely still sleeping now. He'd taken a shower and slipped out, leaving a note on the pillow beside her that he'd gone to see Annie. Julia wouldn't worry that he wouldn't come back.

Annie's store wasn't the least bit busy. In fact, no one but Annie herself was in the place, and she was only watching her miniature TV with a kind of bored fascination. At the ding of the bell on the door, she glanced up, looking annoyed. Spike guessed that there had been another run in with those perverted teenage boys.

"Hey, Spike." Annie smiled, brushing a bit of her red hair away from her face. Spike noted with some sadness that there was the slightest of gray tints to the burgundy strands. It felt…uncomfortable…to think that Annie might be getting up in the years. "What's your special today?"

"Just some cigarettes." Annie tossed him a pack, but she also went to the cold cabinets and got a quart box of milk and a donut for him as well. Leaning against her counter, she frowned when the only thing he touched were the cigarettes.

"What's wrong, Spike?" When he gave her a questioning look, she continued, "I ain't seen you a few days. Vicious just left for Titan yesterday and you come in here lookin' all gloomy. Plus," she added as he lighted up, "yer eyes are lookin' at me without even really seein' me. Who're ya really seein', Spike?"

Spike's expression had darkened throughout her rambling. "Is it really that obvious, Annie?"

"Like readin' a kid's book. You tell me what's happened." She rounded the counter to stand directly in front of him. Her shrewd eyes narrowed. "It's that Julia, isn't it?"

Her tone wasn't protective, Spike noted. It was calling. And she'd certainly just called his bluff. "I'm in love with her, Annie."

Annie's face contorted a bit with doubt. "Oh, boy. Spike…well, I don't even know what to tell you."

"Probably nothing I haven't already told myself. I know there's…complications," Spike said at length.

"Complications?" the shop-owner said, a bit of a guffaw to the way she blurted the word. "Honey, you're almost asking to be shot in the head. Haven't you seen the way Vicious _watches _that girl? Like he could grab her any minute and gobble her up?"

"He's a man, Annie, not a tiger."

"He's a Dragon," Annie retorted. "And ain't dragons always wantin' the pretty girls for themselves?"

_Touché._"All right. But what else could I do, with her crying and me loving her and Vicious gone?" Thinking about it now, he felt on the edge of guilt. "Annie…he hurts her. There are actual injuries in places where no girl should be injured."

Annie paled a bit. "She need a doctor? You can bring her to me, Spike, and—"

"No, she's okay. She will be." Spike reached up and ran a hand through his hair like he was nervous, but when he looked at Annie, his eyes were hard and focused. "I'll protect her. If necessary…from him."

She shook her head. "This whole business has me feelin' bad. Spike, think about it. Vicious might be your friend, but he's also a Red Dragon captain. Now, I'd like to say that Mao would never let you get killed, but when a man's angry and, more'n that, jealous…"

"Vicious is the last thing I'm concerned about," he lied. "The first thing is Julia. If she's hurt again, physically or emotionally, that's my fault." He leaned against the counter, his eyes set on the freshly-swept tile floor. "But how do I know if I'm not hurting her right now, Annie?"

"Well, for starters, I doubt she'd have let you take her to bed." Annie's frowned deepened. "Has she told you how _she_ feels?"

"She did. Yesterday." And hearing her tell him that she'd fallen in love with him had been heaven. But she'd also said she didn't want to. And that had been hell.

Well, heaven or hell, Spike decided once he'd left Annie's and was walking back toward Julia's place, Julia was an angel to him. And he was just the unworthy mortal man.

Spike thought of Vicious.

Unlike angels, mortals died.

The military on Titan had moved out and were crossing the desert terrain on foot, less they should attract rebel units and be caught by surprise. On carts, they pulled weapons, rations, and meager means of shelter behind them. Vicious had certain parts of him that wanted to complain with the others, now that he was so used to luxury on Mars with the syndicate. But he had been chosen to come here because Mao Yenrai knew he could endure, so that was what he would do.

But it wasn't necessary to like it.

On the second day since departing, they took an early break – it was hottest it had ever been on Titan in the days since the first grouping, and Gren and Vicious sat against the edge of the ravine they were meandering through. If either of them had hoped that the slightly shaded rock would be cool against their backs, they were disappointed.

Vicious sipped from a canteen while Gren amused himself by miming playing his saxophone, pressing phantom keys and hearing an imaginary melody.

Vicious ignored him, choosing to delve inside his cloak, pulling out the miniature music box Julia had given him. He wound it expressionlessly.

"Ah, so the man with no emotions has a keepsake." Gren's eyes twinkled mischievously as he moved nearer to him. As he listened to the tinkling notes of the song, he tossed away his cigarette and went for a fresh pack. "What song is that?" he inquired cheerfully.

Vicious didn't look up from the contraption. There was a slight growl in his answer. "Julia."

And there was the history. Because he couldn't detect the brief anger from the other man, Gren smiled sadly. There was always a woman. Behind fascinating man, there was a captivating woman.

He would have to settle for being dull.

Lifting a cigarette to his mouth, he feigned being casual. "That's a good tune." He took a long drag and a long breath. "Well, do you mind if I play that tune on my sax when I go home after all this?"

The syndicate agent felt as mechanical as the music box in his hand. After a few seconds of gazing at the painted dragon on the lid, he held it out to his war partner.

Gren paused with his thumb on the wheel of his lighter. Surprised, he stared into the quiet man's dark, hollow eyes. Something he couldn't name passed between them; not quite trust, but maybe a bit of understanding. Automatically, he held out his hand, feeling awkward as the little music-maker fell into his palm. He found he couldn't even form a proper thank-you.

As he stared at the small gift, Gren saw a sudden flash. Raising his eyes, he took in the image of Vicious, now on his feet. In his hand was a long dagger which reflected in the monstrous sunlight and glinted into Gren's face, falling in a line of light over his eyes.

Gren set his jaw. He supposed there were worse people who could kill him. But his heart still thundered beneath his heavy cloak, and survival instinct had him drawing away from the pale-haired man. Lightning-fast, Vicious pressed Gren back against the ravine by his forehead.

The knife came down, slicing the air with a swift whoosh; the blade was tightly imbedded in the rock just to the left of Gren's head.

Gren turned his frightened eyes to see a black scorpion, squirming in its final moments, its stinger still raised to attack. The dagger had impaled it directly in the center of its shelled body.

Again, Gren found it impossible to thank his partner – his eyes were cold he retracted his weapon.

"Don't take that personally," he muttered. Gren wasn't sure if he was referring to the music box or the fact that he'd saved the saxophonist's life. "There may still come a time when _I _will strike."

Gren could only stare, half-dazed, as the Red Dragon captain walked away, the hem of his cloak flapping in the wind. After Vicious had gone, he glanced down at the music box, and gently wound it.

As the tune played again, Gren couldn't resist smiling.

Review please!


	10. Keep Flashing Off And On

Wow, we're at chapter ten? This amazes me, considering that when I first started this fic, I only intended it to be a two-part deal for a good friend's birthday. And then, as most stories go, it just started writing itself with my brain as the medium. sigh I am not very surprised about that, actually. It happens pretty often.

Enjoy the chapter! There's more Gren for all you saxophone-playing pretty-boy fans out there! But only briefly this time, I'm afraid.

Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop. No profit is being made from this fan work.

Chapter title from Yoko Kanno's "Blue."

Kites Without Strings -- Part Ten: Keep Flashing Off And On

By Gundam Girl

A battle was going to take place on Titan. The recruits had only experienced minor encounters with the rebels; Vicious didn't think anyone had even died yet. That was no war, he thought. There was no real loss until lives were gone.

Gren disapproved of his constantly grim demeanor toward human life. "You always talk about it like it's completely disposable. Lives can't be replaced in any simple way, Vicious. Don't you have some kind of life that's precious to you?"

Gren had almost asked him about Julia but had wisely held his tongue. Someone like Vicious probably didn't appreciate being pressed for personal information.

"Perhaps," Vicious told him in his low, always-even voice. "Currently, it's debatable. I won't be sure until my return to Mars."

"Well, they're giving out phone-calls. Unlimited lines, but you only get five minutes. I don't have anyone I want to call," Gren added, "so if there's someone you feel like talking to before we all go die or whatever, take the time I'm supposed to have."

Vicious studied Gren for a moment. He was lying on the bottom bed of the bunk they shaped, smoking like usual and staring at the underside of the mattress above him. His cerulean eyes suddenly turned to the stoic man and Vicious turned his gaze away from him.

"Go ahead," the saxophonist encouraged him. "Make the call."

Vicious walked out of the tent that served as a cabin. He didn't know if he would or not, but either way, he was away from Gren.

Something about a man that carefree made Vicious dislike his presence.

o0o

The hours Spike spent with Julia were blissful, but there was always worry in the corner along with questions that they both did and didn't want answered.

When would Vicious return?

How would he find out?

Did he already know?

_Who would he kill first?_

They kept their concerns to themselves and turned to each other for reassurance, however temporary it might have been. Spike went to syndicate meetings in Vicious' place. Julia visited Annie often and helped with the store. They indulged in long walked together but were careful of the location. If certain people saw them, it wouldn't necessary be harmless.

For a few days, Spike was truly happy. And he wanted to believe that Julia was too.

And then came the day of the first sting the Red Dragons had held in four months. As that was a considerably long time for a usually-busy organization, Spike was itching for some action. It was his nature. Julia wasn't as enthusiastic.

The morning of the sting, she spoke to him. "Do you honestly have to be with them? I thought Class B was taking care of it. Vicious runs Class A."

"_I _run Class B," Spike reminded her gently. "Lin just got Class C assigned to him last month, and he's barely had the time to gain some real leadership experience. I should help him out. It would be unfair of me to leave it to him."

"It would be unfair," Julia retorted, a slight waver to her tone, "if you went out and died tonight."

Spike paused in putting on his trench coat. They were in her kitchen. He was standing by the door, and she was sitting at the table with a mug of coffee cooling between her hands. Her face, he noted, was turned toward him and seemed slightly pale. She was always so pale…

His voice was soft, low, and still filled the room. "I'm not going to die tonight."

She looked down into her mug and blinked rapidly. _Do not cry, _she ordered herself. She only whispered, "You don't know that."

"Julia." Stepping toward her, he pulled her from the chair He had a sudden flash of the night he'd first kissed her, and he jerked her against him. Her hands held him behind his shoulders. "I love you," he murmured, his fingers threading through the silken waves of her hair. "But I still have responsibilities to the Dragons. And I have to fulfill them." _Even if it only means we survive a little longer_, he added silently.

Julia's eyes were narrowed as she pressed her cheek against his shoulder. "But what if you—"

He stilled her with a quiet kiss. "I'll be back," he promised, moving away. "I always am."

It was too easy, Julia decided once he had gone, taking his heat and leaving her wanting. Too easy to trust his dark tone and dark eyes. She found herself believing him – but that didn't make the concern go away.

Wringing onehand, she gulped down her coffee, planning a late night waiting up with a book she probably wouldn't get through a chapter of.

The phone rang, and Julia felt a bubble of hope. Maybe it was Annie offering company for the evening. She'd certainly accept it, she thought as she lifted the receiver. "This is Julia Mandir."

"Julia."

Her hand jerked, and coffee spilled over the rim of her mug and onto the back of her hand. Although the beverage scorched, she couldn't feel it because all of her blood went positively icy. "Vicious!"

"You sound so surprised," he said evenly. There was a harsh sound against the line, as though wind was rushing by Vicious' end.

"Well…of course I am," she replied, forcibly lightening her mood. "I didn't think there would be any contact from you on Titan. Are you all right?" She winced, knowing her voice sounded false. Hopefully, he would interpret it as shock.

"I am well." There was a pause. Julia considered the possibility of how rarely they had spoken on the phone. Usually, Vicious would call on her in person. "How's Spike doing?"

"I – I don't know," she answered hurriedly, hunting for words. "I suppose he's fine. There hasn't been any talk of the Dragons going down yet."

"That's satisfactory. How are you?"

There was a coolness to his tone that Julia didn't like; it was colder than it normally was. "I'm alright. I…miss you."

"Ah."

_" 'Ah'__? " _What the hell did _that _mean, Julia wondered. "When will you be home?" she furthered.

"I've no idea. We haven't had any major battles yet. One is expected tonight. That's why I'm calling."

"I see." She was shaking so badly, she had to set down her mug or risk dropping it. "Please be careful, Vicious."

"Naturally." She could picture him, his smile completely lacking any hint of warmth. "With luck, I'll see you soon."

"Yes. Soon," she muttered.

"Take care."

"You too. Bye," she whispered, hanging up quickly. She sank back against the wall and swallowed. Vicious wasn't stupid. He must have heard the fright in her voice. The one emotion Vicious fully understood was fear. He used it to his advantage; if he could, he'd do so with her.

Eyes bright with worry, Julia went to wash the coffee from her hand.

_Please, Spike. Survive for me._

o0o

Spike was grateful when Lin gave him a cigarette. They night was brink and his nerves were cold. He had a bad feeling. He'd had a lot of those recently.

"All right?" asked Lin casually. He had the collar of his coat pulled up, his slanted eyes alert.

Spike took a long drag and let the smoke pour from between his lips as he talked. "Never better." He may have looked full of confidence, but he didn't exude it by any means.

"Hope you're sharp tonight," Lin went on. "You've got a bunch of agents here who're eager to see Spike Spiegel in action."

The idea made him smirk a bit, but his thoughts were depressing. At least there were still people with lives not as troubled as his. "I guess it's up to me to put on a show then, right?"

"Okay." Lin motioned to his group and it piled into an unmarked van. "See you at the jewelry shop."

_Asana's__ Gems and Jewels _wasn't quite the run-of-the-mill ring seller. They carried the regular diamonds and rubies…along with a hell of a lot of drugs, mainly Bloody-Eye, in the storeroom. It was property of a neighboring syndicate on Tharsus looking to make a profit from a group of rich druggies on Europa. The Red Dragons weren't intercepting the load with visions of justice…

But if the Europans still wanted their goods after their first dealers had "lost" them, the Red Dragon Clan would be more than happy to offer it to them for a far better-defined price.

It had all the markings of a genius Mao Yenrai plot. The fellow knew business. Spike was grateful that Mao wasn't a selfish guy, either – he'd practically been raised by the crime lord – otherwise he'd still be on the street…if he was lucky. Most likely, he'd be dead.

As he followed Shin to his convertible, his thoughts went to Julia, which hardly surprised him. She was always present in some overshadowed corner of his mind and had been since he'd first set eyes on her. He supposed that in the case of other men, the women in their minds shone brightly and pushed the shadows in the corner away. For him, Julia didn't do that. And he didn't want her to. They needed their nights and shadows. In the dark, they would be together, could have each other...he could love her, shaded from the world.

_What if we go?_

The thought entered his mind so abruptly that he forgot to brace himself as Shin screeched around a curb, and he hit his shoulder on the door.

No, they couldn't do that, at the very least not yet. Vicious might be back as soon as tomorrow and the only safe way to completely avoid him would be to leave as soon as Spike returned tonight. But such a hasty escape wouldn't work. Vicious would be angry, and anger pitted with syndicate resources would get them caught within a month. They would have to stay for now, stay and work it out, then leave once Vicious was too busy to bother with either of them for a few days.

"Let's go, Spike!" Shin's young voice called eagerly. He pulled his gun from inside his trench coat, and Spike did the same.

"Remember that show," Lin reminded him as the two brothers flanked the door of the jewely shop.

Aware of the eyes watching him from the van, Spike lifted a leg and swiftly kicked in the door, wood splintering and flying everywhere.

Since it was after after-hours, no one was in the place except for fifteen or twenty dealers, working sloppily. Boxes carrying drug-filled vials were in plain sight on the floor. The startled expressions on their faces were given away by gaping mouths. Each of them wore sunglasses even though it was nighttime.

"Well, aren't you all inconspicuous?" Spike felt the other Red Dragon members shuffle into the store behind him, weapons out.

The syndicate member closest to Spike whipped out a switchblade and swept forward. Spike easily turned away from the attack and kneed the guy in the gut. His would-be killer crumpled to the floor. "Come on, boys," he invited. "There're a lot of shots to be taken. Surely one of you can get something in."

Chaos exploded not unexpectedly. Spike felt bullets and blades whiz past him as he took men down two or three at a time. He punched, kicked, and chopped, drawing the attention of other Red Dragon agents who, for the most part, stopped fighting to watch. Lin and Shin joined him in the center of the room to take out the final three enemy agents.

"Well," Spike joked to Lin, "that's that."

"You okay?" asked Lin. "You're sweating pretty hard."

"Couple o' suckers got a few lucky shots in – got me in some nerve points. I'm alright though." Wiping the damp from his brow, he grinned. If he was honest, he might need a longer rest than usual, and a first-aid kit. "Nice workout, but I'm ready to get home."

"Take my car," Shin said, tossing him the keys with absolute trust. "I'll go with Lin."

"We'll pack up," Lin added, "so go ahead and take off. Thanks for the entertainment. You were good, as always."

Spike chuckled. "Well, if I didn't amuse you guys, you'd end up at bars on Saturday nights like _normal _people."

He left the cleanup job to the twins. Grateful for Shin's generous offer, he walked to the convertible outside. He was already thinking of some clever, told-you-so statement to Julia.

"How's that for dying?" he murmured to himself with a weak smile – his bottom lip was split.

"I don't know," a voice from beside him quipped. "How's _this_?"

Spike whirled in the driver's seat to his left side, saw the switchblade flash, but couldn't pull out of his thoughts quickly enough. The knife came up, the down roof of the car giving easy access and a simple shot to his face – which was taken. Spike grunted, shocked as the blade flicked past his nose…and directly through his right eye.

Set on dead impulse, Spike grabbed his attacker by the throat and, with his eye that wasn't full of blood, recognized the man as the first enemy agent he'd dropped tonight. He tightened his grip; the man was dead before the car clock could change a digit.

Spike released the man and put the car into drive. Blood stained the steering wheel.

o0o

When it hit two in the morning, Julia shut the novel she'd been sitting at the table with. She'd gotten through five pages in a total of four hours, and she wasn't entirely sure what those pages had been about.

Face stern, she pulled on the closest jacket at hand, a black leather one, and dashed out the door, taking the stairs two at the time down to the building's exit.

She was going to Annie's. Spike usually stopped at her place for cigs or a bottle of something after a mission. If she was going to see Spike as soon as he finished, he would go there.

She pulled back the door and took note of the blue convertible parked badly with its front wheel on top of the sidewalk.

"Jul…"

She instantly glanced toward the sound, which happened to come from near her feet. She thought her blood simply evaporated. "Oh…God…"

Sprawled across the doorstep, hurt and tired and bleeding profusely, was Spike.

He managed to lift his head enough to send her a poor, humorless grin. Julia gasped at the sight of his face; his right eye was bulging, bruise, and still streaming blood. His left eyes, its usual color of dark garnet, was glazed and probably saw her in a blurred image. "At least," he panted, "the boys got their show." His smile faded along with his consciousness, and hisgood eyerolled back, head falling facedown to the concrete.

Julia couldn't feel the rain when it began to come down in hard, ruthless sheets. She couldn't hear it hit the streetlamp, the road, the damn car. She could only feel and hear her own heart as it threatened to strain and shatter. Her hands quaked violently as she felt Spike's bloody neck for a pulse. She found one, but it was alarmingly faint. Julia knew that if she looked in the convertible, there would be obvious signs of major blood loss.

With some effort, she managed to pull his battered body into the hall of the apartment. And then it was all Julia could do not to panic as she raced back upstairs to dial the number Vicious had given her in case she ever needed emergency help from the syndicate:

Mao Yenrai.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Review please!


	11. The Knot That Comes Undone

Ugh, sorry that this chapter took so long, guys. But I do have a (hopefully) good excuse! I had six pages of chapter 11 written, with eight pages planned…and then my computer crashed, and it wasn't backed up. As you can imagine, the rewriting was not easy, nor was it by any means quick. I spent most of my Florida vacation agonizing over it. I've tried to recreate the first draft, which was a lot better than this, but it didn't go the way I'd have preferred it.

Anyhoo, I really hope you can enjoy this chapter anyway. Please take a minute to let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop and am making no profit or income from this story.

Warning: Brief but vile language.

Note: Chapter title from Yoko Kanno's "Butterfly."

Kites Without Strings -- Part Eleven: The Knot That Comes Undone

By Gundam Girl

There was a mole on Titan. Information was being leaked, coordinates were being revealed and, no doubt, money was being exchanged. A good job was being done by a good informant. And the squad leaders on Titan were getting nervous.

Vicious didn't know who the spy was. Vicious didn't really _care_ who the spy was. It wasn't him; and too bad, because the money was probably good. But he wasn't dead –

unlike the twenty or so men that had been shot to death in an ambush the previous night that the troops had been forced to retreat from.

Men kept grumbling about honor being shattered. Honor didn't get shattered, in his opinion. Things like glass and ice got shattered. To his way of thinking, honor wasn't pretty like glass, and it wasn't cold like ice. Honor was just a large burden, one he bore steadily if not happily. And his honor had absolutely nothing to do with Titan, or the war, or the men who had died.

To Vicious, if a man was stupid enough to let himself get killed in the first place, he had no right to live.

It was the one thing Gren hadn't talked about. If someone tried to approach him with the topic of the ambush, he simply lit up a new cigarette and started talking about his saxophone, easily discouraging conversation. No one in the squad liked to hear the purple-haired man go on and on about that damn horn.

So most of them never saw beneath the distracting annoyance Gren let loose. But Vicious, being forced to spend most of his time with the musician, could tell that there was something happening in Gren's mind.

Vicious had never been one to be fooled. Many occasions in his life could prove that.

The squad carried on, despite the casualties. They were marching to the southernmost quadrant of the planet, sparing rations and preparing to eventually signal in to the Saturn mainland ships for resource backup. All of the walking gave the soldiers a lot of time for free conversation.

Vicious normally didn't prefer to just openly speak of anything, opting instead to march in silence. He remained as observant on the scorching, sandy moon as he did on the cement and steel city of Tharsus.

And so it wasn't surprising when he picked up on the words of the pair of soldiers walking in front of him.

"…hear the big-shots are way pissed about the dead guys."

Teenagers, Vicious thought with some impatience. Boys pretending to be men, fighting a war. He'd never been liked them.

"No kidding. Some ass is slipping shit to the rebs. I'd be fucking mad too."

"Yeah, but now they're holding interrogations for almost everyone in the squad by midnight tonight. That means us."

"_Everyone?_Dude, what the hell do we have to do with this?"

"Nothing. Which is what you tell them, moron."

Vicious didn't need to hear anymore. From the shadow that his uniform cowl cast over his face, his lips curled into a smirk he hadn't worn in some time.

An interrogation sounded like a way to make some progress. They weren't getting anywhere with the rebels and frankly, Vicious didn't give a damn. But he had things to do once he got back to Mars, and the sooner he did, the better for him. He was tired of waiting for this war to end.

So he would quicken the pace a bit. And go home.

And once he did…then he would see.

o0o

Julia couldn't feel anything. It was all she could do to call Yenrai's private apartment and talk in fast, urgent tones in response to the man's quiet, patient ones. If asked now, Julia wouldn't have been able to remember a single word that had been said. She only recalled the feeling of utter panic and fear that had filled her whole being to the brim and still had yet to ease away.

She felt like a glass bottle that had been filled with water that had frozen and was about to burst into thousands of small pieces. Julia half-expected to break apart any second.

She was back in the lobby of her apartment building, sitting on the chilly floor with Spike's damp and bloody head in her lap, the rest of his long body sprawled everywhere. He was breathing loudly, and at least that told her he was still alive – but his breath came out raggedly and not at all in any constant rhythm.

Julia felt like she had been sitting here with him like this for as long as it had taken for her to live this long, but in truth it had only been five minutes since Yenrai had hung up the phone and she had dropped hers on the ground to return to Spike.

At last, she heard the sound of a car engine and looked out the transparent door in time to see a black, tinted-windowed limousine roll in through the rain.

Three men in Red Dragon trench coats practically jumped from the back of the car and hustled inside, moving toward Julia with their arms outstretched to grab Spike. Instinctively, Julia's hands tightened around her lover.

"Miss Mandir," one of the agents said to her. "Miss Mandir, you must release Mr. Spiegel. We can't help him if you—"

She was faintly aware of her head shaking, of her hair swinging back and forth as lifelessly as she was currently feeling.

"Please, Miss Mandir. If you don't…"

The man suddenly fell silent, and in the same instant Julia felt a wide, warm hand on her shoulder. "Julia?"

Julia turned her head and lifted it until her face was aimed upward at a man of medium height, his face slightly wrinkled with age, his head still full of dark hair even though it could be suspected that the hairline had receded a bit. The only thing about him that really struck Julia was that he wore a small, gentle smile despite his grim surrounding. The smile arrowed straight into Julia's soul and seemed to snap her from her state of suspended emotion. Tears welled in her eyes as her hands moved away from Spike. The three agents wasted no time, carefully lifting Spike from her lap and carrying him to the limo.

"Mr. Yenrai," Julia breathed, feeling suddenly exhausted in body if not exhausted in worry. "I don't even know how to say—"

"Often when we do not know how to say something," Yenrai cut in soothingly, "it is best to say nothing at all." He bent over a bit and took her by her elbow, helping her to her feet. With patience, he reached into his pocket. Julia found it strange that, despite her immense desire to get Spike to the hospital, the syndicate leader was in no desperate hurry.

From his pocket he pulled a small square of cloth. Julia could make out the tiny, monogrammed initials of MY. With a start, she realized why he hadn't taken her hand instead of her elbow when helping her up. Her fingers were stained by lines and smudges of liquid red.

_Spike's blood._

Instead of immediately accepting the handkerchief and wiping herself clean, she slowly clenched her hands, making fists that trembled lightly. In Yenrai's mind, it seemed Julia was embracing Spike in a way that people never thought of as cherishing.

Julia opened her hands again and took the handkerchief with a grateful nod, thoroughly scrubbing her skin. At his word, she threw the cloth into a nearby trashcan. And with an odd serenity between them, they went to the limousine to help a person both Mao Yenrai and Julia held very dear.

"Do not worry too greatly," Yenrai said. "Spike is strong. He will recover."

o0o

But Mao Yenrai was a wise man. And he wisely had _not _told Julia that Spike would recover completely.

Yenrai kept very calm, sitting straight in a waiting room chair in a sector of a not-so-known but good hospital that the Red Dragon Clan had bought out for syndicate purposes. He was drinking tea, sipping occasionally while looking through paperwork from his designer briefcase.

Julia envied his peaceful mind, but she couldn't even bring herself to try and mimic that middle-aged man. She didn't pace (exactly), more she dragged her feet short distances in the center of the waiting room. Every now and then she switched locations and moved to the window to stare out of the pane of glass and look at the soaked city streets. She barely took notice of the Red Dragon agents stationed around the room – their eyes watched her every move from behind their dark glasses. She wished it would freaking stop raining. Although, she reflected, even if it did it wouldn't improve her mood or settle her emotions.

Things remained this way for three hours. Immediate surgery had commenced as soon as they group had entered the hospital and Spike had been swept away. Julia's heart had never felt so heavy in her life.

By the window, she saw the lights of the lampposts outside, saw their yellow-orange glow haze and illuminate hundreds of raindrops as they sped to the pavement. A nearby jazz club was playing music full-blast. The odd image and sounds influenced her senses and made her suddenly think of Ganymede. Through her mind's eye, she could see herself, huddling close to a heater that only worked half of the time, in a house that was hardly more than a shack, listening to the music and the drunken laughter from the casino just across the street outside.

She'd always thought it ironic that so much money was only fifty feet away from her, and her mother had possessed so little of it.

Julia shook her head quickly, drawing herself from her reverie. She rarely recalled her past, preferring to think about the present. But she understood why her thoughts had turned there; as far as her heart was concerned, even her dismal childhood was brighter than the idea that Spike might be suffering.

"What do you recall?"

Julia turned to see Mao Yenrai standing just behind her left shoulder. She nodded curtly, a sign of respect, and faced the window again, pressing her fingers to the glass: it was so cold…as cold as Spike's skin had felt when she'd touched him after he'd fallen unconscious on her stoop. "I recall things that I should have forgotten by now," she answered Yenrai.

Julia saw his reflection smile in the window. "I have found it to be true that the things we wish to forget are usually the things we remember most clearly."

She thought of the countless pains and aches Vicious had caused her, both physically and emotionally, and Julia knew he was right. "So it seems," she said with a weak smile.

"And that," he told her, "is how you will find it to be when you are unable to ever forget how much you are in love with Spike Speigel." At her astonished look, his expression only grew more pleasant. "You are like water, my dear. I see through you with great clarity. And like water, you flow with continuity. I'm glad. I would hate to know that Spike loved a woman who would not care for him just as faithfully."

Julia didn't know how to reply to such a thing, so she took Yenrai's advice from earlier that evening and stayed silent.

"While you were caught up in your memories," Yenrai went on in her quietness, "I spoke with the surgeon that operated on Spike. He believes that Spike will be very well with time and rest. He will be scarred, and for a while, he shall be weak. Personally, I believe that someone with Spike's will and energy has the ability to increase his healing time considerably, and I've confidence that Spike will be just that way. Every one of his injuries was, after all, reparable. With the exception," Yenrai said before Julia could be too overwhelmed with her joy, "of his right eye.

"The doctor said that there was nothing they could do. They will be replacing it. Fortunately, with today's wondrous technology, it will be easy to give him a prosthetic made of actual eye tissue. But I was told as well that it will impossible to make the prosthetic's iris an exact match of Spike's working eye. His genes are rather remarkable, and the color of his eye cannot be copied. But it will only be a shade or two darker. It will not be noticeable." Yet, even as he spoke, Yenrai's voice was serious.

"I will notice," Julia blurted. The thought had been so loud in her head that she hadn't been about to contain it.

"I will be disappointed in you if you don't. People who care for Spike and know him well will be able to distinguish it. If there's one thing that people all grasp for, it is familiarity." Yenrai sighed slightly. "The operation will be starting in ten minute's time. I am told it is fairly simple. Perhaps you should go home and rest, my dear. Spike will be here when you return."

The thought of leaving Spike in the place, with its plain white walls and pale lights, and medicinal smell made Julia feel instantly rebellious. But she maintained her manners in front of Yenrai. "With all due respect, Mr. Yenrai, I would prefer to stay. I don't think I have the strength to go."

Yenrai could only smile. "What you mean is, you have no strength without Spike Speigel. Very well. Since you impress me, I shall do what I can to accommodate you." In a few minutes, he had it ordered for a cot to be put in the room that Spike would be convalescing in. Julia was to sleep there and have free access to the room whenever she wished for it.

Julia thanked him heartily as his agents were preparing to take him out of the hospital. "I won't forget this kindness," she told him honestly. It was the most she had ever received in her life.

"It's true that I am doing this mostly for Spike," Yenrai told her. "But it is also true that I am glad to being doing something for you as well. Just remember," he added as he put on his coat and opened the door that would lead him into the night rain, "that when Spike awake as looks at you, though his eyes will look different, it will still be the same soul behind them." Saying so, he nodded to the woman and walked out.

As Julia followed a helpful nurse to the room assigned for Spike, she couldn't help but find it amazing that the man that had been so gentle to her was the same man who had coldly ordered the execution of a betraying agent at a banquet.

But, even though he was cold as well as gentle, he was also correct. Spike would be the same. His eyes would be different. And she would not be the only one to notice it.

Vicious would notice as well. And then there would be more questions for him to ask, and fewer answers that Julia wanted to give.

o0o

Vicious found it fitting that his interrogation had been scheduled at a time past dark. Men as heartless as he knew he was deserved no day, no mercy. This he accepted as he walked into the wide, canvas-walled tent where the squad leaders were questioning men.

Upon first seeing the two men in charge, Vicious could tell that they had received no luck. They looked tired and exasperated – neither looked particularly angry. Chances were, they just wanted _something_, anything that might clue them in to who their mole was. One thing was for sure: they were not happy to see Vicious. But he would change that.

"Who is this?" asked one of the men. He was well-muscled, but he was almost completely bald.

The other was thin and ruddy-faced. His lower lip seemed to large for his mouth. "He's called Vicious. His last name is undisclosed."

"A man named Vicious with an undisclosed last name?" the bald man asked. "Who in God's name recruits for us?" The ruddy-faced man leaned over to him and whispered something into his ear, and his whole face changed from irritated to comprehension. "I see," he murmured.

_"That's right," _Vicious thought. _"The big, bad syndicate."_He was half-amused, half-disgusted by their fear. He could practically smell the cowardice emanating from them.

"Well," the bald one said. "Vicious…take a seat. Are you aware of why you're here right now?"

"The same reason everyone else has been coming here," Vicious replied. He felt like a schoolboy must feel when sent to the principal's office. The difference was he wasn't in trouble and was much smarter than the principals.

"Yes, well… There is a traitor in the squad. A defect. We are looking for the defect and preparing to annihilate it. We need to know what you know. And considering your…influence," muttered, the ruddy-faced man, "we find it likely that you might know more than others. Which means you could know at least something."

"I may," Vicious said. "But a person doesn't need influence to find details. If he did, would you two not be more informed right now, gentlemen?"

Both men seemed highly embarrassed.

"At any rate," Vicious told them smoothly, "I am prepared to give you some information that will assist you greatly." They looked far too eager, he noted. Idiots. "However, I am not a man known for charity."

"We would assume that. What do you have in mind?"

"Immediate and permanent leave." Vicious didn't miss their instant reactions of surprise, closely followed by doubt. He didn't care if the men thought he was a coward if it meant getting what he wanted. "I will accept nothing else."

Knowing they had no choice but to accept, the men agreed, calling for a secretary to have the paperwork drawn up. Once the order had been given, they opened their ears to the Red Dragon Clan captain again.

Vicious's mouth was twisted with cruelty as spoke. "I wish to bring your attention to a man you have yet to question. His name is Grencia Mars Elijah Duo Eckner."

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Well, despite all the Gren fans that HATE me now, I must say I had a good time writing this chapter. (Don't look at me, like that, you Gren fans. I love Gren too, but we all knew it had to happen eventually!) I enjoyed writing for Mao Yenrai. He's such an interesting person and it was an experience to try to grasp his personality. I hope it is approvable.

Thank you all for staying with me. I apologize for the long wait. Let's just hope my computer doesn't crash again, eh?

Review please!


	12. Lovers Of Lost Dimensions

Wow, I can't begin to tell you all how long it took me to start this chapter, mainly because of how pivotal it is. Since I'm attempting to make this story seem believable in context with the series, I had to consider a lot of points made in the anime as opposed to what I originally thought I'd do with this chapter. So there was a lot of scrapping and rewriting. I thank you all so much for the support; writing this fic wears me out!

Another thing that slowed the update down is the fact that 1) my laptop currently is without Internet and 2) my disk drive wasn't detecting anything I put into it so I couldn't save the chapter to disk and post from another computer. Sorry. I finally went out and bought an external floppy disk drive and that seems to be working for now. So I apologize for the wait.

I hope you all approve of this chapter, but please bear in mind this is simply my imagination running wild. Who knows the exact events between Gren and Vicious on Titan? (Besides the author, but you know…)

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't claim to own Cowboy Bebop, its story, characters or settings. I am making no profit from this fan story.

Note: Chapter title is from Yoko Kanno's "The Garden of Everything."

-- Kites Without Strings -- Part Twelve: Lovers Of Lost Dimensions

By Gundam Girl

Spike felt…warm. Almost uncomfortably so. But he reveled in the heat because though his memory was hazy at best, he did recall a feeling of such frigidity that it made his pulse skid a bit. He'd been so cold…and he'd fallen down, down into such blackness.

But he'd seen her. He'd seen his Julia and he hadn't been afraid. Her eyes, no matter what worry or fear they held, always put him at peace.

He couldn't move. He knew that without even attempting to do such a thing. His entire body felt like stone, heavy and tense. He noticed that each sense was returning to him, one by one. Through his left eyelid, he saw a crimson color that meant sunlight was shining on his from somewhere. But he knew he wasn't in his own bed; his sheets were satin, and what he was laying on was second-rate linen.

His sense of smell returned in a rather unwelcome way. He caught the atrocious scent of medicine and antibiotics. Oh, God…he was in a blasted hospital.

His hearing came to him in the next instant, and he nearly groaned from his displeasure at the notion of being stuck in some facility for invalids where there was nothing but solid _boredom_…

But then Spike heard the music. He didn't need a second thought to tell him that the voice was Julia's. He ceased all thinking for a few moments, hanging to every note of that serene tune, eager to let her gentle humming be all there was in the world.

He was suddenly desperate to see her. He wanted to watch her while she made that lovely sound, and with great effort he managed to open his left eye. He had to blink rapidly to adjust to the sudden light filtering in through the windowpane on the far end of the room, but his gaze quickly landed on her. He took in the sight of her shimmering, golden river of hair and the curve of her lips, though she was not smiling. Her eyes were downcast, focused on something in her hands…a book. She was reading peacefully to herself.

Her song ended, and he couldn't bear the lack of it. As of yet, he hadn't even paused to wonder why he could only see her through his left eye, so entranced was he by the music.

"Just like that," he murmured, his voice hoarse and gruff from such deep sleep. Julia's head darted up from her book, and her beautiful eyes leapt up to look straight into his. She immediately stood up from her chair and moved closer in one careful step as though she might disturb him if she walked too quickly. She leaned over him, her gaze full of concern.

Spike seized the chance to implore her further. "Sing for me...please."

Her worry lessened, and she smiled softly at him. Passing her hand over his damp forehead, she began her tune again, lulling him once more into a painless, dreamless sleep.

o0o

Vicious had known before entering the interrogation tent that his actions were going to cause people – one person in particular – to hurt. This realization had not stopped him; he had hurt many before in order to meet his goals. And his only goal now was to return to Mars. If there were necessary measures required for him to meet this goal, he would take them.

He didn't care what the fate was of Grencia Mars Elijah Duo Eckner. The only fate he cared about was his own and the ones he planned to seal fate for.

Leaving the tent, he stood just outside the range of the nearby lantern light and looked up at the stars. To him they were pinpoints of good, trapped in an overwhelming cover of evil. In this way, the night sky depicted life. Vicious smiled at the thought.

Already he could hear the authoritative whispers coming from the two military morons he had exchanged words with until just moments earlier. He may be forcing history to take a turn for the worse, or perhaps Vicious was merely moving things a pace. He couldn't be certain, nor could he honestly say he found what happened on this desert of a moon important. True importance took place on the red-tinted grounds of Mars.

The next morning word spread like wildfire through the squads that "that saxophone guy" had been arrested and was soon to be held for trial. Vicious, for the most part, ignored the gossip that mainly said Gren was the traitor. Vicious had no _real _proof of this fact; what he had was a man that got nervous over talk of betrayal and a few idiots with badges that were ready to believe anything from the mouth of a syndicate agent.

The odds were in his favor.

The one hitch Vicious hadn't counted on was the generals demanding a testimony from him at Gren's trial. Vicious wasn't worried; naturally, as a Red Dragon captain, he was skilled in the art of lying and would have very little trouble conjuring up verbal evidence of Gren's disloyalty.

It was only a couple of days after his meeting with the generals that the trial was held. Vicious sat silently in a row with a handful of others bearing testimonies to or against Gren's guilt. His place was behind where Gren was seated, so he couldn't see his partner's face, nor could the musician see him.

Political and military blather took up the better part of an hour, and it was nearly forty minutes before Vicious was called to make his statements. The syndicate agent rose coolly from his place and walked to the front of the group in long, even strides that proposed his confidence.

He swore truth to the tiny court, though inwardly he smirked at the use of the frivolous Bible. He found the novel quotable reading but little else. Then his eyes turned to the man he was condemning, and their gazes met.

Gren's expression, to his surprise, rattled Vicious. In it was fear, hate, anger, despair. Vicious couldn't recall ever seeing someone so full of grief before looking at the person he saw now. Of course, no one but Vicious could discern the change in his demeanor, and he looked up from the purple-haired soldier and at the presiding judge.

"My testimony against Grencia Eckner involves personal experience. I did not happen to stumble upon his passing battle tactics to a rebel spy," said Vicious calmly.

The judge gave him a mistrustful look, as though he waited for Vicious to give himself up instead of seeking to turn in Gren. "My interest has nothing to do with what you did _not_ find this man doing."

"I'm simply stating that what any of the fools waiting to speak tell you is not at all the case." Vicious could feel the other men with testimonies tense with indignation. "I found out Eckner's actions when he told me them himself."

There was a surprised murmur that rippled through the group around them.

"I lured this man into his confession," Vicious told the judge, "as there would of course be no other way to get it. For the past week…" He studied the judge's expression carefully. "I have been sharing intimacy with this man hoping to procure the truth from him."

This time the surprise was no murmur but a shout and instead of rippling, it passed through the people like a tidal wave. But no one's outburst was as loud as Gren's shocked silence.

The judge was perspiring as he stared at Vicious critically. "In simple terms, Vicious…are you saying you slept with Eckner to get him to tell you he betrayed this unit?"

"Yes," said Vicious, not missing a beat.

"This is…outrageous," the judge muttered. "I have a hard time believing that someone such as you would go to such lengths to assure—"

"You realize, surely, that these efforts were not for this unit alone." Vicious eyed the judge solemnly. "Yet that topic is not relevant."

"I suppose that's right. And still, I'm confounded…"

Vicious tuned out the man's babbling and set his eyes on Gren again for a reason he didn't know. The purple-haired saxophonist had tears streaming down his face from his great indigo eyes. From the trembling of his lips and the spasms of his throat, Vicious could tell he was sobbing.

"I've nothing further to say," Vicious told the judge. With that, he strolled swiftly from the trial tent.

Outside, he happened upon one of the men he'd been interrogated by two nights earlier. It was the muscular, bald general. "I expect to be on my way home to Tharsus within three days," he told him. Though his tone was smooth, it projected the desired warning.

"It will be done," replied the general sternly. "You can count on it."

Vicious walked past him, the ends of his hair and the hem of his cloak flapping in the dry, Titan breeze. "Believe me; I will."

To his extreme displeasure, Vicious felt a certain heaviness in his stomach that he recalled faintly from boyhood. He didn't like the thought that the feeling might be guilt, but since it had been so long since he had come even close to experiencing that particular emotion, he thought he might just as easily have acquired a minor illness.

After all, he had absolutely no reason to feel guilt for the punishments he had just assured for Grencia Mars Elijah Duo Eckner.

o0o

When Julia had finally been able to talk to Spike without him dozing off every ten seconds, she did not beat around the proverbial bush. With an honest quickness, she told Spike that he had lost any sight in his right eye.

Spike, for his part, took the news relatively well. Though the first few seconds after hearing of his recent situation held nothing but a dark frown, he soon gave in to his usual grin and said in a teasing voice, "I don't need any eyes to make love to you."

Though Julia wished he would be more serious toward the development, she hadn't been able to help her responsive smile. "I guess you don't," she replied. "Anyway," she went on, sensing her lover wasn't eager to stay on the topic, "the doctor says you can move home in a day or two as long as someone cares for you. Will you be wanting to go back to your own apartment?"

Spike seemed to appreciate the way she worded the question. "Are you inviting me to your place?"

"No," she told him, her tone much more solemn. "I'm saying you also have the option of Annie's."

Spike's good eye winced. "Honey, I've got bandages _everywhere_. Don't get me wrong, I love Annie like my mother. But when it comes to hands all over me, do you think I'd rather have good ol' mom or the girl I'm crazy about doing the touching?"

In that sentence, Julia was indirectly assigned to Spike maintenance. While she would have preferred nothing more than to keep him close where she could attend to any need he might have, the thought of there being no clue when Vicious may return forced her to only spend most of each day in his apartment and leave the nights to his apartment building's well-paid staff.

Slowly, with each day that passed, Spike was able to lose more bandages and replace them with clothes. Once the last thing that remained was the square of cotton taped over his newly-replaced eye, Spike jokingly said, "I'm going to miss those sexy little sponge baths."

"They were time-consuming," Julia pointed out.

"They were the _best_," he insisted with a wide, silly grin. "So, nurse, when do I get to see my new eye? It had better be pretty, considering I only get to see you half as well anymore." Though Spike was attempting to be cheerful, there was a touch of irritation to his tone.

"Give it a couple more days, Spike," Julia said as she leaving for the day. "I've got to go meet with Lin and Shin. They're going to file the official report on your health condition and speak to Mr. Yenrai for you."

"Oh yeah? Well, when you see Shin, tell him I'm sorry about his car. I know _I _wouldn't like blood on my upholstery." He cackled at her disapproving look and continued laughing until she shut the door and her footsteps dissolved down the corridor.

And then he stopped smiling altogether.

Sitting up, he slowly stood from the couch he was lying on and, bracing himself with a hand on a nearby wall, he meandered his way over to a rectangular mirror near his kitchen counter.

He looked like himself. His hair was still green, his left eye was still its brownish-red, and aside from a few bruises left here and there, he was still the same Spike Spiegel he'd been before a lucky bastard with a knife had gotten the better of him.

The exception was that he felt almost painfully different. Despite his eye being put out of commission, he was beginning to see things a lot more clearly. As far as he knew, Vicious would walk in the door any minute and ask him what in the world had happened. He had no reason to lie about the events of the sting, so he wouldn't.

What he had to come up with a reason for was why Julia had been the one to watch over him for such a long while…even before he'd gotten hurt. Of course, the part of Vicious that was Spike's best friend would probably be grateful that his two closest companions were helping one another. But the silver-haired katana wielder often had multiple senses of judgment. And the part of Vicious that was Julia's lover would be jealous of Spike and Julia's recently shared passion for each other.

Murderously jealous.

If Spike thought of the situation as a member of the Red Dragon Clan syndicate, he would prefer that if he had to be killed, his best friend Vicious should do the honors. True, if only a few months before he had been facing death, Spike wouldn't have given more than an initial thought to it and would have gone bravely.

But he'd met Julia. He'd fallen in love with Julia. And Julia, to both his despair and his ecstasy, loved him just as much in return. And now death was the last thing Spike wanted to face if it meant that he and Julia would be separated.

Perhaps his train of thought was cowardly, and perhaps Spike had lost his feverish daredevil side. It seemed he'd traded in that part of his heart for part of a woman's. And now both he and that woman were facing danger, brought by someone they both had trusted not very long ago.

Life, Spike concluded, but nothing but a twisted mass of confusion and cruelty, with the occasional moment of happiness. But those moments were only there to make the punishment of later that much worse.

Thoroughly depressed, Spike turned away from the mirror, suddenly disliking the person reflected in it. He returned to the couch and lay down once more, but he didn't sleep. He stared up at the molded ceiling, making out shapes with his one, imaginative eye.

He was not surprised when he found a section of the patterned plaster to resemble a katana, dripping blood.

o0o

"Thanks so much, Shin. I really appreciate the effort." Julia's words as well as her smile were sincere as she shook the younger twin's hand. "Spike does as well."

"It's no problem. And tell him to never mind about the convertible. I can get another car." Shin paused and raised his dark eyes to the sky, as though pondering his own words. "Well, actually, it _was_ a 7000 blue…"

Julia couldn't resist a quick chuckle. "Goodnight, Shin."

Shin grinned at her and gave a little bow before turning and practically dissipating into an adjacent shadow.

Julia left, and rather than taking a taxi from the syndicate office building she walked the five blocks to her neighborhood.

Lin and Shin, she mused, were both such good, charming guys. But it had always troubled her about how _young _they were. They were barely seventeen, and yet they had been members of the Red Dragons together since before Julia had even joined, and she was eight years their senior!

On another hand, she supposed she shouldn't be so surprised. The really skilled syndicate agents were probably raised to be members from even earlier ages.

It made her wonder just how long Vicious and Spike had been trained as agents. She hadn't realized before now that she'd not known.

As she slid the key into her door and unlocked it, Julia suddenly felt a very cold, very dangerous chill. The tiny hairs on her nape stood on end, and her fingers began to tremble lightly. On instinct, her hand reached for the .44 tucked into the waist of her pants.

_Stop it_, Julia told herself in the next instant. Her door had been locked, no one could get in. And she had an alarm that connected her apartment to the syndicate security team. There'd have been agents storming her building by now if someone was actually inside.

Assuring herself she was simply paranoid because of her meeting with Shin and Lin and the discussion of Spike's health, she turned the knob and went inside.

Before she could flip up the light switch, she felt icy fingers close over her wrist. Her startled shout froze in her throat as she heard a disturbingly familiar voice fall over her ears, the soft tones unwelcome.

"I'm home, Julia."

She turned her head slowly to look into the coal-dark eyes of Vicious.

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Review please! (As a warning, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with the next chapter! ;)


	13. The World Spins Backward Every Day

This chapter kind of comes out of left field. And then again, it doesn't. What do you guys think?

I honestly have not much to say this time. Enjoy the chapter!

Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop.

Note: Chapter title is from Yoko Kanno's "The Singing Sea."

-- Kites Without Strings -- Part Thirteen: The World Spins Backward Every Day

By Gundam Girl

Julia was not as surprised as she thought she might be upon Vicious' return. And she had always known that he would return; it would take more than a war-bent moon to kill him off.

She now finished the act he had interrupted her in and turned on the lights; but the action felt separated from her body as though someone other than her had flipped up the switch. The dim electric glow beamed down on Vicious's pale hair, making it silver. His bangs fell over his forehead, shadowing his eyes. Julia thought they would never lighten even if the sun was reflected in them.

Wordlessly, she watched as Vicious withdrew his hand from her wrist. Almost immediately Julia felt several degrees warmer. Vicious moved to her table and held up a bottle of white wine.

"I thought we might celebrate," he told her, one corner of his mouth lifted upward in a smirk. Julia was wary when she couldn't tell if his good mood was genuine or not.

"I…of course," she said, forcing a smile, forcing herself to appear happy. "Welcome home." She stepped toward him and pressed to his chest, wishing as soon as she had that she had kept her distance. But the cause of this wish was a mystery. Vicious did nothing threatening. He merely settled his arms around her like one would around a large vase; firmly but with great care.

"Did they release all of the syndicate agents from duty?" she asked, looking up in an attempt to meet his eye but at the same time hoping he wouldn't do the same.

"No," he told her softly, keeping his gaze from her and on the wall behind her instead. "Just me."

Julia froze for a second, unable to even think. The idea made chills run up her back, but she managed to laugh. The sound was airy and full of disbelief. Fake. "Why did they do that?"

Vicious did look at her now, and the hard expression on his mystifyingly lax face gave Julia an unpleasant jolt. "You complain?"

"Don't be silly." She could have cursed because of how quickly she had replied. "I couldn't be gladder you're here. It's just odd."

"It is," said Vicious, "for men who aren't in with the Red Dragons." He pulled away from her, and Julia's heart pounded in his wake. "Wine?"

"Yes," she murmured, accepting the glass he filled and sipping from it slowly. She doubted it was poisoned; Vicious preferred more direct approaches. "Was it…" She wanted to talk, needed to fill the torturous silences with conversation – Vicious was looking at her in the way he had always looked at her before turning down the lights and the covers. "Was it dangerous on Titan?"

Vicious drew his glass from his lips. "What do you think?"

"I'm only asking…because you don't appear hurt." This was true. There were no wounds on any bit of flesh that Julia could see. She found this strange right away. People didn't go to wars and come back unscathed.

"I'm bruised," he said as though proving her wrong with his voice alone. "That's the physical." Julia was silent and he added, "But the emotional is different. I've seen death." He breathed out the three words like smoke. "And you never have."

When she had first met him, Julia would have protested, would have fought back and told him that she hadn't lived the protected life he thought she did, but she couldn't even imagine arguing with Vicious now. And besides, in this instance he was right. Julia had never seen a person die.

She thought of Spike and realized she had come close, however.

Julia's fingers immediately tightened on her wineglass. _Spike! _

She felt the chill settle over her and noticed that Vicious had set his hand on her taught one and slipped the glass from her grip. Setting it aside, he pulled her to him, and this time he embrace was unlike before. This one was fierce, more familiar to Julia than the careful one from a few minutes before. Vicious twined his fingers into the thick fall of her hair, pulled her head back and sealed his mouth to hers.

The kiss was nearly painful. Julia's eyes stayed open and wide as he plundered her lips, raking his teeth down her jaw and over her neck. She understood that Vicious was making the experience a bad one on purpose, and she also understood that were Spike to do the exact same thing, she would be reveling instead of forcing herself to stay in Vicious' arms. She wanted badly to push him away, but she couldn't and had never been able to.

Suddenly Vicious stopped his rough exploration and stepped back, breathing just the slightest bit abnormally. Julia's hands had balled into fists, and he noticed them before she could make herself relax. Vicious gave her the same confounding smirk.

"I'll be back later," he told her, reaching for his coat and heading toward the door. "I've another visit to make tonight."

Julia felt an icy hand clench her gut, but at least her voice came out steadily. "Mr. Yenrai?" she tried, hoping with her entire heart that she was right, or close.

"Hardly." Vicious turned the knob and opened the door with all the authority of the apartment's owner, when in fact he was an intruder here. "What kind of friend would I be if I came back to town and didn't tell Spike right away?"

_No! _Unable to contain all of her panic, Julia practically sprang forward and took Vicious hands. "Can't you see him tomorrow?" She could scarcely hear her own voice over her ferociously beating heart. Her face growing paler with each second, she lifted a hand to his neck, parting the collar of his coat with her assuredly cold fingers. Vicious's flesh was no warmer. "You just came home," she added, hoping her voice was softer than it was to her own ears. "I've missed you."

Julia saw something flash across Vicious's eyes, and part of her knew that she had made a wrong decision. Her time with Spike had given her confidence; she'd forgotten that Vicious always caught people in their lies.

His hand came up to grasp hers with unnecessary force. "Later," he responded, pressing his lips to her knuckles. The word, to Julia, seemed more like a threat than a promise. He dropped her hand and Julia drew it close to her chest. Vicious shut the door behind him – the click of it made Julia think of decisiveness, which was no doubt something Vicious had.

She rushed to the phone and hurriedly began to dial Spike's apartment number. When she made it to the fourth digit, she stopped. Vicious had intelligence that could trace her calls. She might even be listening to hers and Spike's lines right now in his car.

The receiver dropped, bobbing twice, three times at the end of the stretching cord. Julia sank to the floor, pressing her forehead to the wall and letting her sobs rack her body. Her tears left small dark spots on the wood…on the back of her quaking hands.

o0o

Spike's apartment was pitch-black. He hadn't been active very much since it hurt to move a single muscle. He had tried to watch television and had made an attempt to read, but both activities strained his working eye – he could only hope that with time his body would overcome that particular weakness.

So now he lay on the couch in the same position he had five hours earlier when Julia had left him there. He hadn't bothered with turning on any lights; the night had come and filled his apartment with darkness. Shadows roamed the floor and walls while spots of car headlights from the street below blazed over and off of him.

He wasn't tired. Sleeping was another concept that currently escaped him, and he now stared out of the glass doors that slid open to the balcony of his home.

Across his apartment building was a skyscraper that was secretly owned by the Red Dragon Syndicate. Mostly guard agents were stationed there because Spike was only one of many fellow agents living in this building. But tonight there was a figure who was most certainly no ordinary agent.

His body was a shadow painted against the light that poured out from the open terrace doors behind him. Around the chin-length hair was a faint silver glimmer and Spike's courage weakened upon seeing it. Below, a police car sped by, its sirens wailing out a warning. The light was flashing and was reflected upon the dozens of windows in the surrounding buildings.

Vicious's face was cast in a demonic glow of crimson for three seconds at most before it was once again plunged into darkness.

Spike could have sworn that he'd seen his fellow syndicate member smile. But it had been a smile like he had never seen before.

Suddenly Vicious turned away from him and walked back inside. Spike knew right away that he was coming over and would find him here, disgustingly vulnerable. The injured man struggled to sit up and get to his feet, crossing to the door to turn up the light switch there. By the time he got halfway back to the couch, he was panting and was forced to clutch the edge of his dinette for support.

Looking at the drawer built into the structure, he opened it and pulled out a .44 caliber handgun, reaching to tuck it into the waistline of his pants—

Spike froze. He realized that he was arming himself against Vicious, someone he'd spent years as closest friends with. The idea seemed both reasonable and preposterous all at once. But there was no denying the facts; Vicious was not someone to be taken lightly.

He made sure the gun was tucked in well, then hid it under the hem of the T-shirt he wore.

He waited all of five minutes before the quiet knock came. Taking a deep breath for his strength as well as his mind, Spike staggered forward and managed to open the door. Vicious's face was now fully visible in the well-lit hallway. Spike pulled out a smile while he opened the door the rest of the way to invite his former friend in.

"So you managed to survive after all," he said, glad his tone was dry with wit he didn't really felt he had.

Vicious snorted softly and entered the apartment, closing the door behind him. Spike's hand was braced just under the light switch against the wall, and Vicious didn't hurry to create more space between them. "Of course I survived," he said quietly in the same way he would have before Spike's world had been turned upside down. "I presume you expected nothing less?"

"Nothing," Spike agreed, feeling his calf muscles quiver slightly with the task of standing up. "No one could outshoot you except for me." Dropping his gaze a bit, he saw out of his left eyes that Vicious had his katana strapped to his belt – the sheath protruded a bit from the edge of his black trench coat. "Didn't waste any time in getting back in uniform I see."

"I've never been one to waste time. That hasn't changed." Vicious studied Spike's bandaged eye with an icy smirk. "But apparently your knack for coming out of things unscathed has gone to seed."

Spike grinned, unable to help it. "Bastard caught me while I was leaving. Tore my cornea right out. The eye's new."

Vicious remained silent for a moment as though thinking: _"So you've only half your sight. Having it fully before obviously did nothing to help you see your mistakes." _He held up a hand and grasped Spike's arm. "I'll help you."

The grip with which the pale-haired man held the other man's limb nearly alarmed Spike. There was a threat on the tips of his fingers that Spike should have known would be there but had been too hopeful to anticipate. "Thanks," he grunted. He had no choice but to accept the assistance back to the couch.

Once Spike was settled, Vicious seated himself in an armchair opposite the sofa. "I presume the sting went well, despite its unfavorable results for you?"

"Sure it did," Spike said, his tone arrogant but purposely relaxed. "_I _lead it. But I still don't like doing it. You're better at it than I am."

"So it may be," replied Vicious, hardly louder than a murmur. "You wouldn't have been hurt at least, had I been there."

"No, I guess I wouldn't have." Spike believed this as well; Vicious had saved him from close calls innumerable times. Without Vicious, he would be dead already and he couldn't simply ignore that.

"How did Julia take my absence?"

Spike tensed – he had known that they would come to this but he had thought it would take more time and would certainly not be so easily asked. "She varied," he said. This at the very least was the truth. "She was worried." This was as well, except that her worry had been for Spike and not for Vicious.

"She often does, doesn't she? Women have a right to," the katana user added. He made sure Spike's eyes stayed level with his; red against black, fire against wood that refused to burn. "They worry as men fear."

Spike had lost his smile, and the edges of his mouth were now pulled taut and firm. His jaw could have been the angles of stone for all the softness it had. "So far," he muttered darkly, "I haven't had any reason to fear."

Vicious noted that Spike was holding his breath, waiting for the response that would mark his doom. He smiled. "That's right. Do you know why, Spike?"

Spike inhaled slowly, his chest rising in a bracing way.

"I'm the only one who can keep you alive," confided Vicious. His eyes gleamed in the lamplight with something esoteric about them. "And I'm the only one who can kill you."

The two men sat, studying each other with guarded expressions. The fingers of Spike's right hand twitched. He was quick, and it would be easier to draw a gun from his pants than it would be to draw a sword from its sheath…

Vicious blinked – his eyes stopped gleaming. "Don't you think so?"

Spike forced himself to grin. The action hurt, and he thought his lips might crack from the lack of self-truth, but he did it. "Seems that way. At least I managed not to die."

"Yes." Vicious stood up. "I must go. I will have to report to Mao tomorrow. He will need to know which of his men are back."

"They sent more than a few of you back?" Because he thought it might make Vicious feel a bit more friendly, Spike let it show that he was impressed.

Vicious showed himself to the door and opened it while Spike watched him from his spot on the couch. "No. The only person who got off that planet was me. The others, I suspect, will quickly die."

Spike stared.

Vicious smirked.

The door shut, leaving the injured man alone in his apartment to listen to the sound of Vicious' footsteps fade into the space beyond the door.

Spike began to shake; he wasn't afraid. Not yet. But that was encroaching. Right now he trembled from cold, the utter physical chill Vicious had left behind him. It felt like some kind of frozen Hell.

_"Julia…"_

Two things suddenly became very clear to Spike. One was that Vicious had absolutely no intention of letting him or Julia to continue living. The other was that Spike had absolutely no intention of allowing either of them to die.

And it was time he proved that to himself and the woman he loved.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Please review!


	14. Door To The Secret Paradise

Thanks all for joining me yet again in another chapter of crazy angst! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop and no profit is being made from this fanwork.

Note: Chapter title taken from Yoko Kanno's "Flying Teapot."

-- Kites Without Strings -- Part Fourteen: Door To The Secret Paradise

By Gundam Girl

When Spike walked into the hospital the next day, he was only a little surprised to see Julia already there. The doctor had been right; he'd only needed a few weeks for his eye to heal and by now his entire body was functional again as well. Just yesterday he had thought it would have been impossible for him to leave his apartment, but he felt nearly as good as he had before the sting.

None of this was news. What was news was that Julia was waiting at the receptionist's desk, her arms folded, waiting for Spike.

"What are you doing here?" Spike demanded. He immediately winced. "Sorry, that isn't what I mean. Julia…did Vicious…"

"No," she said, her voice shaking slightly with the relief of her answer. "I know it sounds unlikely, but he didn't do anything. He came back once he left your place, and he…kissed me. Only kissed me. And then he just _left_. But Spike…" Her eyes were almost slate grey with worry. "He knows. I'm _sure _that he knows."

Spike dipped his hands into the pockets of the trench coat he wore. He said nothing, merely watched her; she was twisting her fingers together, and her eyes were shining so brightly with emotion. "Julia…"

"Spike Speigel." The doctor who had treated him when Mao had brought him in was smiling from the doors that led into a corridor. "If you'll follow me, we'll lose that eye bandage," he said kindly.

Spike went with the doctor, feeling Julia close behind him, and the three of them walked into a small examining room.

The doctor seated Spike on the examining table and brought over a bowl of liquid that looked like cloudy water. "This will help take off the adhesive of the bandage," he explained, beginning to dab at the thick gauze with a towel.

Julia stood against the wall near the door, patiently waiting with her arms still crossed. Spike stared into her eyes with his only working one.

After a few minutes, the doctor gripped a corner of the bandage and pulled it gently from Spike's right eye. The bandage fell off easily, and the doctor gathered it, the bowl, and the towel and set them aside.

"There you are, Mr. Spiegel. It looks like the prosthetic healed nicely. We'll need you up front to fill out a few leases, but I'll give you a minute while I go converse with another patient. Excuse me."

When the doctor had gone, Julia pushed away from the wall and approached him. "Do you want to see?" she asked under her breath. She thought she would need a few minutes to adjust to how differently he looked.

Spike nodded and Julia took a hand mirror from a nearby cabinet and held it level with his face.

He didn't look all that different, Spike thought. But of course Julia would notice. He definitely had. With his left eye, he examined the right one. "They did an okay job," he murmured, his usual mirth absent in his voice.

"Your eyes are different colors," breathed Julia. She seemed captivated, as though trying to find every possible change between them.

Spike smiled softly. "My left eye sees the past," he told her in a hushed tone.

"And?" Despite her feelings, which were confused and rolled over and under each other in her heart, Julia smiled as well. "What about your right…"

Spike was silent. He took her hand and caressed the back of it with his thumb.

o0o

The Swordfish II shook violently as Spike steered it down onto the sand of a remote place far outside of Tharsus. A large bland structure rose in front of him as he landed, and Spike shut the engine off, climbing out and jumping to the ground, sliding a bit on the edge of the red dune.

From somewhere within the structure a radio was playing. Spike meandered toward the sound, his hands in the pockets of his new suit – a long cut of blue, which he wore over a yellow shirt and black tie. He treated it to himself; this was a special occasion, after all.

Spike let his eyes roam once he was just inside the structure. It was just a big garage really, and here and there were boxes of tools thrown in every which-way. Spare landing wheels dotted the floor beneath three large one-man pilot ships, one of which was a mono-racer similar to Spiegel's.

"Hey!" he called out to the whole space. "Doohan! Where are you?"

There was a loud clatter, an even louder curse, and then an aging man with a well-wrinkled and very displeased face appeared from behind the mono-racer, clutching his elbow. "Who the hell is it?" he demanded.

"It's Spike Speigel," said Spike. "The lousy kid you gave the Swordfish to."

"Oh it is, eh? Well." Doohan stepped up further so he could see Spike in the better light. "I figured I'd see you again sometime. You didn't wreck that piece of art, did ya?"

"Nope. But I need you to check it out for me. I'm…taking a trip." Spike was satisfied when the old man shrugged, not coming close to detecting his bluff.

"The Swordfish II is no traveling vehicle. No space plane is," said Doohan with all the importance of a man with his knowledge. "You'd want a ship."

"I don't have the time or money to look into getting a ship right now," Spike told him. "The Swordfish will get me off of Mars at least. Just tune it up and I'll get out of here."

"The problem will you young folk today is you think everybody has time for you." Doohan sighed, scratching the side of his head with the wrench in his hand.

"Like you're busy."

"I'm always busy!" Doohan insisted. "Just not as much sometimes as other times." He passed a hand over his forehead in defeat. "All right, Spike. I'll take a look at it, but it'll take a couple hours. Hope you're not in a rush."

"I just need your best work. The matter I need the Swordfish for is bigger than anything I've ever done before, Doohan."

Doohan stared into Spike's eyes for a moment, and Spike wondered if he'd noticed the difference between his eyes. "You change your look somehow, kid?"

"No." Spike led Doohan out to the mono-racer. "I'm just a bit more focused than usual."

"People who try leavin' the syndicate usually are."

Spike froze even as Doohan continued his business by opening the hood of the Swordfish II and inspecting the many gears and wires inside. "Doohan," Spike began.

"You're not the first person to try, and if you fail, you won't be the first to do that either. Just don't tell me where you're going."

Spike regarded the aging mechanic with a wary look. A few seconds later, he sighed, unable to help smiling. "I guess you would be able to call my bluff, wouldn't you?"

Doohan paused, his wrench around a screw he was tightening. "Spike, just tell me something. Are you going to get yourself killed?"

"I'm not," said Spike firmly.

"Are you going to get somebody else killed?"

"_No_," Spike told him, louder this time. "I'm not going to get anyone killed, Doohan. I'm going to get two people some freedom."

A silence passed between the two men for several moments. Finally Doohan resumed his work, but asked, "How are you planning to do it?"

"I was hoping you could help me with that."

"What? Me?" Doohan surged upward so fast, he hit his head on the Swordfish's hood. "Damn it, why the hell do you wanna drag me into all this?"

"I need to buy your other mono-racer. It looks a lot like the Swordfish." Spike glanced at the plane sitting idle in the garage. "Everyone knows that the only way out of the Red Dragons is to die."

"You're not serious—"

"I've got money," Spike stated. "I'll buy the whole thing from you – cash. What do you expect it'll be….fifty-thousand woolongs?"

"Well…yeah," said Doohan. "But Spike, what are you gonna _do_ with it?"

Spike turned back to him, and the artificial sun created a halo-like glow around his emerald hair. "I'm going to die." He grinned.

o0o

"It sure has been raining a lot," Shin commented to his brother. "You think it will effect the operation tomorrow morning?"

"No, I think Vicious will work through rain and blood," replied Lin. "As he always does. And Spike is just as resilient, of course."

Both of them turned as the elevator on the top floor of Mao Yenrai's personal office building dinged. The doors parted to reveal the man in question, his cocky smile in place.

"You're a little underdressed for a meeting with Mr. Yenrai," Lin said as Spike approached them.

"I'm afraid I'm not on his schedule." Spike nodded a greeting to Shin. "Does he have a minute?"

"He's always very busy," Shin said, "but I don't see why he wouldn't want to see _you _anytime."

"Go on in," Lin added.

Spike began to step forward, then paused. Spinning, he set a hand on each twin's shoulder. "You two…you're really good guys. I hope you know that." He drew away and turned on his heel, disappearing into the syndicate leader's office and leaving both boys befuddled by his compliment.

Inside the office, Mao was filling manila enveloped with files on agents and documents concerning passage into Tharsus – deliveries of drugs to the Red Dragon Clan.

The man looked up from his activity, his eyes shrewd beyond the wrinkles surrounding them. Although Mao was aging bodily every day, Spike had always believed that his remarkable mind only grew in wisdom and thus stayed young and keen.

"Spike," said Mao with a smile. "I didn't expect to see you until tomorrow."

"I'm early," Spike replied with a shrug of one shoulder. "I hope you don't mind the intrusion too much. I really needed to come here for a minute."

Mao nodded, his expression still pleasant although there was a slight glint to him that meant he had caught onto something right away. "I see. Your eye – Doctor Pearson did a very good job with it. Has it hindered you much?"

"I'm adjusting." Even saying so, Spike wished very much that he could see Mao with both of his eyes instead of just his left. This man who sat behind a desk was the only father figure he had ever known and he cared for him much more deeply than he had ever let on. To everyone, he had always been just a daredevil boy with good piloting skills. To Mao, he had been a son. "I never said thank you for helping me."

"There's no need. It's Miss Julia you should be thanking. Had she not called you, the results would have been far less favorable than the mere loss of a single eye." Mao stood up, pausing for a second as he rose while his senior legs got used to the change of position. Then he turned away from the desk and stared out of the large floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the wall there.

The silence stretched between the two men, though not uncomfortably, until at last came Mao's patient voice: "Why have you come here, Spike?"

Spike moved forward until he was just in front of the desk, his fingertips resting on its surface. "When I thanked you, I meant about everything. My whole life…it all happened because of people like you, and people like Annie…you didn't have to take me in. But you did anyway and made sure I grew up well."

"Spike." Mao came around the desk now and though he had to look up to meet Spike's eye he seemed no less powerful for it. "I did what I was obligated to do. Your father and I were in the same unit of the Red Dragons. We were good friends. When he died, I naturally went to see to your mother."

Spike didn't reply, but his surprise was great. This was more than Mao had ever told him about his parents. It was true that he had never really asked about them, but it was strange at any rate.

"I could see she was ill. Her heart was weak from the dust that lesser technology couldn't prevent from entering the city then. It was obvious that she would not survive giving birth to you. I had it arranged for you to be put into an orphanage, sent to school, and to be trained by the syndicate until you were fifteen years old. If you then wished to be free of the Red Dragon Clan, you would have that wish granted.

"But you did not choose to go, and you joined us the very day you turned fifteen. And you have been with us ever since." Mao joined his hands behind his back. "Have you any inquiries for me?"

Spike's face was grim, but he did have one question. "Why are you telling me all of this now, sir?"

Mao's face relaxed ever further, and his smile widened. "Because the look in your eyes now, even your prosthetic one, is the same look you had when you decided to join the syndicate. I can see that you have made another important decision." He stepped away from Spike and moved to a small safe at the far corner of the room. His back to Spike, he opened the heavy iron door and drew from it a single revolver. Closing the safe, he walked back to his agent and held out the gun. "This was your father's."

Spike took the gift with a numb hand. He was having trouble meeting Mao's eyes.

"I am not giving it to you because I believe it will influence you in any way. I know you are too hard-headed a young man for such a maneuver to work. But it has been nine years since you became a Red Dragon Clan member. Long enough, I believe, for you to have earned the honor of carrying this weapon."

Spike held the gun up to his good eye and stared at the letters engraved into the side. "Jericho," he muttered.

"If anyone is so worthy a marksman to use it, I am confident it is you. The walls of Jericho were brought down," mused Mao, "but I do not believe this one could be if it is in your hand."

Spike lifted his gaze to Mao. "Thank you."

"You are welcome only if you use it well." Mao extended his hand and Spike shook it wordlessly. "Be well." The two words dismissed him in one small wave of pride.

It wasn't until Spike was on the street outside the building that he realized Mao had, in his own subtle way, bade him goodbye.

o0o

It was raining. Julia could hear the thunder roll from inside her apartment. She was looking at a sculpture on her window sill; two fish facing each other at different heights. It was starting to make her think the fish couldn't get to each other. She'd bought the thing on impulse, but now that she was feeling like this she wished she hadn't. She hadn't turned on her lights, and the whole room was cast in a grey glow that made it seem dismal and faded.

She had just received a call from Lin, whom Vicious had asked to mention about the sting that would take place tomorrow morning. "This time," the older of the twins had joked, "Spike is sure to be safe from any harm with Vicious there."

If only Lin could know just how dangerous Vicious's presence was; Spike was more likely to be harmed this time than at the sting that had taken his eye.

Her door wasn't locked. The thought came to her like a sixth sense a split-second before it opened. She froze for a moment as the intruder stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Her heart in her throat, she turned.

Spike stood there, his smile small but full of certainty. He did not greet her but gave her a look that seemed to read her whole mind in a second. And right away, then, he could tell she knew about the operation.

"When this is over," he said, "I'm leaving the syndicate." His smile never wavered, and the lack of fear both impressed and concerned Julia.

The confusion of emotions made her voice steady and clear. "They'll kill you." It was a fact. "You know how they work."

Spike gave a soft, single chuckle, and a gleam came to his eyes that told Julia he was up to something. "Let them say I'm dead." He reached into the pocket of the trench coat he had donned. Julia's eyes followed his hand there, and she recognized the outline of a gun, but Spike brought out a folded slip of paper and not the weapon.

"I'll be waiting at the graveyard. _By _the graves, not _in _one of them," he added.

"Spike…" Julia wanted to take the paper, but survival instinct wouldn't let her just yet. "I can't come with you." Every sensible part of her told her this.

But Spike was the insensible part of her and said otherwise. "Yes you can. We'll leave here…and get out of this." His voice was fluid, like the way he fought, but for now he wasn't fighting.

Yet Julia _was _fighting. "And go where?" she asked desperately. "And do what?"

"Live." He said the word with the most amazing passion, both calm and animated at the same time. "Be free. It'll be like watching a dream."

Those words were what convinced her heart. Her hand lifted of an accord that didn't quite seem her own. Or maybe it simply didn't seem her own because Julia wasn't used to giving in to her heart. Spike slipped the paper into her hand, his fingers brushing hers and sending a flare up her arm, reminding her just how much she loved him.

She met his eyes, and in that instant Spike understood why _he _loved _her_: he had never met someone with so much vitality and feeling. He had never met someone that was truly alive before her.

As Spike left after a kiss that made her knees want to buckle, Julia was reminded just how much it hurt to love him even while loving him had brought her the only true peace she'd ever known.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Okay, guys. Revelation time. There is only ONE MORE chapter left to this fic. It's been an amazing run, with the most intelligent reviews I've ever received, but all good things come to an end. Thank you for a wonderful writing journey. The final chapter is already half-written, so look for it to be up as early as Friday.

And please review!


	15. Love Never Ever Fades Away

Well…we've come to the end. It's been a wonderful time writing this story. I also beat the two-year mark by about 28 days. Yay!Special thanks to Starzki, whose reviews have inspired me the most. You are my Bebop fic soul mate, I think.

More notes at the bottom. Enjoy the final chapter, everyone!

Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop and am making to profit from this story.

Note: Chapter title taken from Yoko Kanno's "The Real Folk Blues."

-- Kites Without Strings -- Part Fifteen: Love Never Ever Fades Away

By Gundam Girl

Spike walked out of Julia's apartment building with a feeling he couldn't quite define. Part of it was exhilaration; that he was going through with this, that Julia was coming with him, that both of them would be free from the shackles the syndicate had clapped on them.

And then he spotted Vicious walking down the sidewalk, away from his black car, toward the place he had just exited. And he understood the other part of his feeling – Contempt.

Contempt that he had to do this, that he had to betray the only family he had ever had, to run with the woman he loved…all because of this man who would sooner kill them to soothe his own anger than let them love in peace.

"Spike," Vicious called, his voice betraying nothing. Spike smirked, not because he was happy to see his former friend, but because part of him wished the katana master would just go ahead and expose all of the hate he held for him. "Visiting Julia?"

"I was showing her my eye," lied Spike. "She told me before that she wanted to see it when the bandage was taken off."

"Hm." Standing only a couple feet away from him, Vicious gave Spike's eye a swift inspection himself. The rain had let up, giving them a reprieve, but Spike suspected it would be brief. "It looks well, but for the shade being darker."

A long time ago, Spike might have felt pleased that Vicious had noticed the subtle difference. It would have made him think what a good friend the pale-haired man was. Now he understood that Vicious was merely regarding him with the close scrutiny of an enemy. "Well, I get what I get, looks like," was all Spike said. "Are you going to visit Julia now too?"

"Yes. I finally have a mission for her." Vicious's eyes narrowed only the slightest bit when Spike's own gaze hardened. "Don't worry; it will be nothing dangerous for her. I also have confidence that she will perform well."

"She's very capable," Spike agreed. "Whatever you give her, she'll take it seriously."

"Do you believe she will want it?"

Spike had to school his expression into thoughtfulness although he knew the answer right away. "I believe…that she wants to be happy."

At that, Vicious allowed himself to smile. But the smooth upturning of lips was cold, and Spike thought if he touched Vicious now, he might feel the chill of the ice-water that seemed to run through Vicious's veins in the stead of warm blood. "Then you have just confirmed it for me. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

"Yeah," Spike replied under his breath. What _it_ did Vicious mean, exactly? "I'll be there. I'll put on my best show yet."

The two men continued walking, and as they passed each other, side by side, Spike felt as though time stopped for half a second. And he knew it would be the last time he saw Vicious.

But he never looked back.

o0o

The sound of Vicious's footsteps was a metronome, and it kept the tempo of fate. Fate that came closer and closer to Julia as he climbed the stairs that took him to her door.

Julia couldn't hear him, couldn't hear anything beyond the thoughts swirling inside of her own head. She had the address Spike had given her still clenched between her fingers, which quaked slightly. She was sitting in a chair at her table facing the window, waiting for the skies to open again and drench Tharsus with its power.

She was lost behind a veil of happy illusions she fervidly wished would become reality soon. Maybe if she wished hard enough, she didn't even need a fairy godmother's help. But it seemed to the pessimistic part of her mind that it would take more than magic to give her a good life with Spike.

So lost behind this veil and these thoughts was she that Julia didn't register that her apartment door had opened. It wasn't until she felt the cool press of a gun's mouth to the side of her head that she even realized anyone had entered. However, she felt as though she had somehow expected it; she had expected it all to go wrong. And so she felt no need to look up at her would-be assassin.

"So. You were going to betray me?" came the frosty words from the equally frozen man. "Did you _really_ think you could just leave?" A touch of heat was added to his voice this time, making the syllables steam.

A sort of panic seized her, and his name fell desperately from her lips. "Vicious…" She felt his eyes not on her, but on the address in her hands. Her bangs fell over her eyes, shielding her feelings from him. Because the answer was yes; she had started to believe…

"Keep dreaming, Julia," he advised lowly. "It's never going to happen." How would she react, he couldn't help but wonder, if he told her that Spike had just now given them away without knowing.

_"I believe…that she wants to be happy." _As far as Vicious was concerned, if he did not make her happy, then no one would.

The quiet possessiveness with which he spoke angered her just enough to cast her worried eyes up into his. "Are you going to kill him?" she whispered.

"_I _won't." Vicious drew the gun away from her flesh and set down with a dull click on the table beside her. "_You're_ going to do it for me."

Julia could hold back her gasp, and she jerked slightly toward him, silently begging him to be lying. It would be the first lie she would have welcomed from this demon. Fear clutched her heart and festered there.

Vicious smiled down at her, a smile full of victory he was assured he had gained. In his black suit and long scarf, he looked oddly like a preacher; one who worshipped the devil rather than God. "Either you kill him," he told her, "or both of you die. Those are your only options. You wanted a mission," he reminded her cruelly. "I have finally seen fit to give you one."

He walked away from her, his smile firmly in place, toward the door. In the last instant before he stepped out, Julia swiveled around. "What have you to possibly gain from this, Vicious!" The purity in her voice was like fresh air in the stale oxygen of the room.

Vicious paused, his hand on the doorknob to close the wood panel behind him. "I think you already know the answer to that. The question is what have _you _to gain?"

Julia stared, uncomprehending his words.

"Shall I tell you?" Vicious began to pull the door shut behind him. In an inch before it did so, he whispered one word:

"Freedom."

Alone in her apartment, Julia heard the thunder roll above the city. A streak of lightning fell across the sky and lit up the room for just a moment, like a revelation.

And Julia did received a revelation. When she was sure her legs would function correctly, she stood up from her chair and went to the window, tearing Spike's paper with her oddly steady fingers as she moved. She cupped the torn fragments and tilted her hands.

The shreds fell like the pieces of her broken heart to the cold, wet pavement below.

"I'm sorry, Spike," she murmured to the rain. "You'll have to watch your dream alone."

o0o

The next morning, syndicate agents from the Red Dragon Clan were gathering at, of all places, an auto junkyard. But Mao always knew what he was doing; the more ludicrous the pickup spot, the harder it would be for the ISSP to catch them red-handed.

The earliest arrivals were Vicious, Shin, and Lin. That was to be expected. Normally, Spike would have gotten at the location by now as well, and only the twins found this to be unusual.

"Spike _did _say he is coming, right, Vicious?" queried Lin to the silent older man. He still had Spike's actions from the day before heavily on his mind. "The will of the Van—"

"Spike will be coming," interrupted Vicious, his voice the slightest bit harsh. "But you should know that Spike's participation in the syndicate has never had anything to do with the will of the Van."

Lin fell silent, answering his brother's questioning look with an identical face that held only confusion.

Other members began showing up, their groups small so as not to attract attention from any people on the street outside the chain-link fence around the perimeter. Shin was about to take his turn to query Spike's presence, when the black-clad assembly heard a familiar buzzing in the air above them.

A red mono-racer was flying toward the junkyard. Vicious felt both of the twins relax behind him and, indeed, he could not help but form a smile of his own. But his happiness was caused by a completely hostile and loathing feeling.

The mono-racer hovered just above them. The looks of many agents' faces gave the impression that Spike might as well have been an expert knight, come to win the battle. If anyone had ever been an embodiment of hope in the Red Dragon Clan, it made sense for it to be Spike. And now, like Achilles, he came riding in his chariot…

And then the chariot exploded, and the mono-racer disappeared, replaced by spheres of flames and pillars of black smoke. Scraps of metal began to rain down upon the agents. Outbursts broke forth from many of the men.

Vicious's eyes hardened at the sight.

Standing by the window of her shop, Annie's hand had leapt to her mouth and the explosion in the middle of the city was reflected in her kind gaze.

Mao Yenrai's face was shadowed by the plume of smoke, which rose well in his sight from his office where Spike had been standing with him just the day before. His expression showed no surprise, no shock…only fierce determination. He did not believe the boy he had cared for was dead.

From her apartment, Julia was staring at the shards of the plane's windshield that glistened in the early morning light as they fell to the Mars ground below. _Spike…What a charade you've turned all of this into._

On the street only a block away from the Tharsus Community Cemetery, Spike put the device that was part-remote control, part-detonator back into the pocket of his dark trench coat. His eyes were on his feet as he walked. If anyone had bothered to look, they would have noticed he was suspiciously the only person around that wasn't watching the show overhead.

Spike paused in his strides at the sound of someone whimpering. Turning his head to the right, he realized he had stopped in front of a flower vendor. But the vendor was only a little boy, no more than nine or ten years old. His eyes were large and frightened as they stayed trained on the "accident."

Taking a drag on his cigarette, Spike smiled. "Hey."

The boy yelled in surprise, jerking to look at his addressor, breathing rapidly.

"Sorry to scare you, kid." Spike almost chuckled. He had, after all, just frightened the boy by both his abrupt call and the explosion a minute ago. "I need one of those." He pointed to a bucket of long-stemmed red roses, their blooms closed against the rain falling on them.

The boy stared for a second, then smiled with much joy. "Of course! Thank you." He took Spike's money graciously and passed him the single flower with enthusiasm Spike had rarely ever seen.

"Thanks yourself." He turned away and continued his path toward the graveyard. He made it there and stood in the middle paved walkway in the center of the fenced area. He passed his fingers lightly over the rose's vibrant petals, feeling their softness and wondering how long it would be before Julia followed him here. He couldn't expect her right away…just leaving her apartment as soon as Spike "died" would bring far too much suspicion.

He knew, of course, that this whole incident would bring a world of trouble to Mao and the Red Dragon Clan. The ISSP would surely start an investigation before night fell. The Longs would be horribly indecisive for a few days. Vicious would be furious. Annie would be horror-struck. And Shin and Lin would feel abandoned for awhile.

But each of them, those who loved him and those who didn't, would recover from the loss of him. He was willing to hurt people for the woman he loved. And he was showing it right now.

Two more hours passed. Spike was fine with that; there were still hours left in the day, and Julia would surely be here soon. He seated himself on the bench just inside the cemetery, making sure the collar of his coat was pulled up to hide his neck and face.

He was on his ninth cigarette by the time the town clock chimed six in the evening. Damn, the woman was making him nervous. And she was giving him cancer.

By eight, he was soaking wet. The rain had poured down at seven and had drenched him with its fierce wrath. He'd seen five ISSP cars zoom past him, and three black cars that he was fairly certain belonged to the Red Dragon syndicate. He was out of cigarettes, and his lighter was too wet to work.

At a quarter before ten, Spike was ready to stomp all the way to her apartment and pound on the door, screaming her name with a voice as frenzied as he felt. But just as he stepped outside the gate of the graveyard, a plain red car pulled up in front of him.

His heart stuttered. _Julia…_

The window closest to him was rolled down, and Spike saw a large man look out at him. He was balding on top of his head, but he still had a thick black beard on his jaw that curves up to his temples and slashed under his cheekbones. "Hey." The man stuck an arm out of the window and Spike realized within two seconds that it was a cybernetic implant. "You okay, kid? Do you need a ride?"

Spike stared at the man for a few seconds, wishing he had his other eye so he would be able to study him more carefully. Mainly however, his eye was focused on the vehicle the man was driving. "Is that your car?" he asked, his voice sounding oddly detached to his own ears.

"This? Nah," said the man, scratching under a metal plate near his eye. "I'm renting it while I'm in town. I'm waiting on some repairs to my ship. You're all wet though. You sure you don't need a ride?"

Spike found his way into the passenger seat, though his steps did not seem to be his own. "Can you take me someplace specific?"

"Sure, just give me directions. I'm not really familiar with Tharsus."

Spike directed him to Julia's place and then half-listened to the man as they rode through town. The best part of this generous man's lift was that he got a cigarette out of him.

"…some kind crash in the city, I heard? A mono-racer going up. Man, I tell you, we never got any shit like that in Ganymede."

"Ganymede?" Spike stared at the dash board, his face stony. Julia had been born on Ganymede.

"Yeah, the only excitement there was a second-rate casino, but even that placed closed down a few years ago. They bulldozed it right into the ground." The man turned onto Julia's street. Spike didn't even wait for the car to completely stop before he jumped out and bounded toward her apartment building's door. "Hey, kid! Are you—" But his voice was cut off and Spike slammed into the place.

He stormed up the stairs two at a time and knew even then how much he was risking. Vicious could have gotten to her, could have used her to trap him, to lure him back in. He'd done it before to other agents that had tried to cut loose.

That would have been fine. Just so long as he didn't find out that it was something else. That Julia had—

He burst into her apartment, chest heaving from running up all those stairs. Everything was the same. That silly fish sculpture was still at the window. There was a tea kettle sitting on the cold stove. He lunged for the bedroom, only to find it the same state, with the one exception that her closet door was open and half the clothes in it – for the most part, the warmest ones – were gone. He went to her bathroom and saw that nearly all the contents of her medicine cabinet were missing as well. And when he finally went back to the kitchen, he saw that the coat rack next to the door was empty of her coat.

Spike emerged from the apartment building five minutes later. The rain continued to drop on him mercilessly. Almost at once, Spike felt the feeling return to his limbs as the shock slowly subsided; he realized with not so much as a start that he was still holding the rose he had bought her. It was the only beautiful thing around him. In his lack of awareness, one of the thorn's had dug into his palm, making it bleed a thin stream down his hand.

He let it fall to the icy cement beneath his feet, right in the center of a water puddle. It caused the edges to ripple.

The man was still sitting in his rented car and was now looking at him with a heap of concern in his gaze. "Hey, kid… If you want, I can—you know—drop you off somewhere else."

Spike nodded, although he didn't have a goddamn clue where that somewhere else might be. He didn't have a single place to go. He'd given up his entire life in one day – all for a woman who had simply vanished like the shyest phantom.

With a last drag on the gift cigarette, he dropped it too. It fell to join the rose as he stepped back toward the car and joined the man.

They drove in silence. Spike noticed after a minute that they were headed for the space port. Suddenly, the man spoke up. "Listen, kid… Well, starting off. What's your name?"

He didn't know how strongly he could speak right now, but his voice came out surprisingly clear, if void of any emotion whatsoever. "Spike. Spike Speigel."

"Well, Spike Speigel!" The man was trying overly hard to make himself sound cheerful. "I'm Jet Black. And well… Aw, hell, I don't normally do this. Listen, I'm a bounty hunter. I've only been at it for a few months, but I've been thinking about looking for a partner. You seem like an okay guy. You interested?"

Spike was silent for a moment. "A bounty hunter?"

"Yeah, you know…cowboys. You find some criminals and get paid for bringin' em in. I used to be with the ISSP, but I kicked that beat about a year ago now." Jet smiled, but there was no naivety about his expression. "So? You in?"

Spike didn't look at him and just kept staring at his lap. After a minute or maybe even two as they finally pulled into the space port perimeter, he felt himself smile. "I could maybe be a bounty hunter," he muttered.

Jet looked satisfied. "You got some kinda spirit, Spike. I think you're just holding it back for right now. Thing is, if you come with me, I only got a ship. I don't have an extra plane for you or anything."

"That's okay. I got one of my own. Actually," Spike told him with the ghost of a grin, "it's parked inside the port right now. I had…plans for it. But they're changed now."

Jet was too pleased with the prospect of having a partner to notice the sudden dejection in Spike's tone. "Well, you'll have that. So then. Whaddya say? Partners?" He held up his replacement hand.

Spike shook it with the same hand that had been punctured by the thorn. Both injuries, though one life-lasting and one very minor, represented parts of their pasts that would be left covered. As he touched Jet's hand, he was barraged with visions of Vicious, of Julia, of Annie, Mao, and the twins, and he knew that these images would keep burning themselves into his mind, making his heart ache.

He was hated by the man he had once called his closest friend. He had been left by the only person he had ever truly wanted. The person he was still in love with.

He wouldn't forget. He didn't even want to forget. And one day he was going to get all the answers he needed. But for now… Spike met Jet Black's eyes and gave him a genuine smile.

"Partners."

See You Later, Cowboys

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

And from here, as we all know, Spike goes on to a life of hunger, women with attitude, children, dogs…basically life as usual on the Bebop.

I can't possibly thank you all for being such a perfect audience for this fic. Every review was encouraging and helpful, and it was a wonderful ride. This won't be my last appearance in the Cowboy Bebop world. I've actually got a fic planned for Jet's past concerning Elisa, but it may not happen for a while.

If you haven't seen them, I have two one-shots for Cowboy Bebop, "Begin" (a story at Vicious's point of view toward Spike) and "Over and Over" which is the brief story of how Julia meets Gren on Callisto. Feel free to check them out! I'd love to hear from you on them.

Again, thank you all so much for reading. Please do leave a final review for this fic. I'd love to know everyone's views on the ending. Good? Bad? Let me know!

Be well,

GG


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